Never Let Me Go
by CrazyKater
Summary: *SLASH* When Hutch is murdered under horrific circumstances and in the company of a mysterious man, Starsky is left reeling. Hindered by the people who once helped him and haunted by memories of the past, Starsky struggles to piece together what happened to his partner and why. PART ONE COMPLETE AS OF 8/18/19.
1. Chapter 1

**VENICE PLACE, BAY CITY, CA **

**MARCH 5, 1979**

The lady downstairs had let him in.

Though she had eyed him warily at first, her dark eyes looking him up and down, her aged face wrinkling and puckering as she frowned. He was a newcomer—a stranger to her. Someone to be carefully assessed then turned away or allowed entry into the living quarters he had come to view. She took her time deciding which, then, seemingly determining there was enough of a family resemblance, she produced a key from the back office.

"That other guy isn't going to like finding you here when he gets back," she muttered, leading him up the stairs. The soft words were nearly inaudible, quickly absorbed into the walls of the steep staircase surrounding them. "Even if you really are his roommate's father."

Lips frozen in stubborn line, John Hutchinson ignored her statements. He had given little thought to pleasing or upsetting others with his presence. He hadn't traveled this far to make acquaintances, and he had no desire to engage in small talk with strangers. In fact, had the decision been left up to him, he would have liked to avoid the trip entirely. But there was a promise to fulfill and an envelope to deliver. The last two things he would ever do for his beloved son.

Coming to stop before the closed apartment door, his stomach churned with dread. He didn't want to enter the apartment and find himself surrounded by his son's belongings; he didn't want to wander around the space, aimlessly theorizing about how his son had lived—or how he died.

Unlocking the door, the woman clutched the key protectively. "If you're still alone when you get done looking through things, then be sure to lock the door when you leave." She assessed him skeptically. "And for the love of God don't take anything. Lord knows what kind of trouble I'll get into if you do. The guy who lived here was cop, you know."

"I know," John said, his tone even despite the jolting pain erupting in his chest. It was a feeling he had become accustomed to over the last few weeks. A heartache so deep and vast that he was certain it would never fully leave him. He wasn't sure he wanted it to; it seemed wrong to hope for such a thing.

"And so is the guy who's still living here," the woman added.

"I know that, too."

"I supposed you do." Her expression softened. "The man who was killed was much younger, but, _Jesus_, he looked just like you. I didn't say it before, but I am sorry for your loss. It's terrible what happened to your son. Just terrible. You never think that kind of thing can happen to anyone in your neighborhood, you know? Rotten things happen all the time, but I guess we always think it shouldn't happen to anyone we know."

Unwilling to continue the conversation, John nodded impatiently at the door. "I would like to go in now."

"Of course. Like I said, you lock up when you leave."

"I will."

She left him then, her swift footsteps echoing through the staircase as she made her way down. He closed his eyes, feeling as though his heart was pulsating in his chest. He didn't want to be here. Helplessly, he wondered why had come as he hesitated mere inches from the doorway that would lead him somewhere he had never been. Then, inhaling a deep breath, he opened the door and slowly entered the apartment. He determined not to stay long or spend too much time considering the space. He would go inside quickly, spending just enough time to leave the envelope behind somewhere it was sure to be found. There were two letters inside of it—one from himself, explaining the documents it contained and who to contact if there were questions, and another from Kenneth, an apology and good-bye of sorts—both intended for the man whom the woman downstairs had warned him about. Entering the apartment, however, his determination to leave quickly slipped away. He was too taken aback by what he saw—and how he felt. Open and inviting, the space was small and clean. Flowing seamlessly into the kitchen, the living room was uncluttered. Magazines, records, books, and a guitar sat untouched in their respective places, each seemingly patiently waiting to be picked up again.

Frozen in place, John was numb, taken aback by the hominess of the apartment, overwhelmed by the indisputable knowledge that his son was gone. He wanted to cry, to scream about how disgraceful the situation was and bellow a heart wrenching truth which had been discovered long before this moment: A child should never die before a parent. A father should never have to endure a single day knowing that his only son had passed away. And through it all, his regret remained.

Why had he never come here before? Why was this visit destined to be facilitated by tragedy rather than good-intentions?

The question was as painful to think about as its jarring answer. He had never visited because his son had instructed him to stay away.

_"__It's too dangerous_," Kenneth had said, his voice soft as the deterring statement crackled through the long-distance phone line. He hadn't been in the US during their conversation, John was certain about that, but he couldn't recall where his son had been. How could he? It was a detail Kenneth had been so careful not to share. "_It's hard enough to maintain my image from day-to-day, I can't have you showing up in Bay City and complicating things."_

The explanation had been a farce, John had known that then. Things were already complicated for his son and they had been for quite some time. The obstacles thwarting his life, though self-inflicted, had long predated Kenneth's forced bid for his father to stay away. Kenneth's secrets were resolute, they remained the same since the day he had embarked on his perilous career until his untimely death.

_"__Besides, I'm supposed to hate you, remember_?" Kenneth had asked playfully. "_That's the story and I'm sticking to it. It's too late to change it now." _

At the time, John had closed his eyes, picturing his son's mouth curling into a brilliant smile; it had been a happy thought, something to hold on to and remember, but it didn't take long for the truth to sully the moment—as it always did.

There was a time when his son's words had carried more truth than fiction, when their father-son relationship had been tattered and strained. Days, months, and years had passed without a word spoken between them; they were both too stubborn for their own good. John hadn't agreed with his son's choice in career. Searching for something more than his affluent, Midwestern upbringing could provide, Kenneth had embraced secrecy and adventure, turning his back on the innocuous life his father had wanted for him. It was his son's profession that had shattered their relationship, though, eventually, it had mended it, too. When Kenneth had finally decided he needed someone to trust, someone who could burden the sliver of truth he could tell and would always hold his best interest at heart, he had turned to his father. Not for help—because that hadn't been an option—but for emotional support.

"_When are you coming home?" _John had asked.

_"__To Minnesota?" _

_"__To America." _

_"__Oh… Uh… There's some loose ends. I'll be here for… awhile." _

_"__Tell me where they've sent you this time."_

_"__You know I can't do that." _

_"__Then tell me that you're okay," _John had urged, not fully understanding why he needed confirmation of such a thing. Kenneth was alive. He had called him on the third day of an extended covert visit just as he always did—just as he had once promised he always would.

_"__Dad—" _

_"__Tell me." _

_"__I'm okay." _

Even then, he had known his son's enthusiasm was forced.

Suffocating on the weight of the memory, John made his way outside and into a small enclosed greenhouse attached to the apartment. Surrounded by lines of flourishing greenery, he felt too old and exhausted to be facing this pain alone. His wife, Dorothy, was too emotionally fragile to be expected to visit Bay City. Their daughter, Mallory, hadn't spoke of Kenneth since his funeral she didn't know how to process the loss of her brother.

As siblings, Kenneth and Mallory had never been accused being close. Too much time had passed between his birth and hers to expect such a thing. Kenneth had been their first child; his birth had been carefully anticipated, decided upon and planned for just after John and Dorothy had been married. Mallory had come along much later; her addition to their family was neither decided upon nor expected, but she was welcome just the same. Kenneth had been midway through high school when she was born and teenage boys couldn't be expected to have an interest in babies. She was merely a toddler when he had left for college, and like her brother before her, Mallory had grown up as an only child. She and Kenneth had spoken only sporadically and spent little time together. She was child and he was an adult; their lives and goals were decidedly different and left little room for mutual understanding or fierce togetherness.

John and Dorothy had always assumed—they all had—that a day would finally come when enough time would pass to bring Kenneth and Mallory closer together—when the gap between their ages wouldn't seem so wide and they would have a plethora of things to agree upon or argue about. John had always believed that someday Kenneth and Mallory would have an opportunity to get to know each other. But that hadn't been the case. Kenneth was dead—they had finally killed him, just he had always feared they would. He and Mallory didn't know each other and now they never would.

John knew he would never be privy to the details of how or why his son had died. Though his son's superiors had advised of his passing, they had communicated the same specifics that had been released to the public. His son's body had been found on the stained concrete inside an abandoned warehouse, lying lifeless next to an unconscious man. The other man, Michael Bennett, had been lucky—if one could call him that. Sustaining a traumatic brain injury, Bennett now lay in coma with little hope of regaining consciousness. But he was alive—which was more than John could say for his own son. Kenneth's official cause of death had been listed as a gunshot wound to the head. The explanation was infuriating; it was too simplistic, because, though he would never know the truth, John was sure that what his son had endured had been much worse than that.

Hanging his head, John forced a deep breath as tears threated to overwhelm him. He wouldn't cry. Not now. Not here, surrounded by so much vibrant, green life. There were dark, private rooms for such a thing, complete with towering bookcases and large oak desks hiding full bottles of amber bourbon in their bottom drawers. He had two such places at his disposal; one in a towering hospital building where he conducted office hours and another at home. He wouldn't lose control over his emotions here; he would hold on to his devastation, eventually expressing it in private quarters at a more appropriate time.

"What are you doing here?" a masculine voice asked from behind. Gritty and low, the words were slightly slurred and decidedly annoyed.

John didn't turn around. He didn't need to see the man standing behind him to know who it was—because he had warned by the lady downstairs. He didn't have to look to know what he would see—because he had seen it before.

Though he hadn't attended the memorial service, the young man standing behind him had shown up for Kenneth burial; arriving at the cemetery announced, he had lingered a fair distance from the group. Standing amongst headstones, old and new, tall and short, the young man had looked terrible; his hair was disheveled, his clothes wrinkled and blue tennis shoes left untied. Taking long pulls of a bottle, the label of which was hidden beneath a brown paper bag, there was a sadness gleaming in his tired, blood-shot eyes. It was the first time John had seen the man Kenneth had always spoken so highly of; the man whom his son had said was loyal, trustworthy, loving, and kind. He had wanted so badly to speak to him—to leave the group and ask how he was and thank him for the making the journey to the Midwest— but, at the time, it wasn't appropriate to do such a thing and by the time the service was over, the young man had been gone. He had left before they could be properly introduced.

"You shouldn't be here," David Starsky growled. "You have no right to be here. You aren't welcome here. Hutch hated you."

"I know," John agreed, forcing an even tone; though he had consented to the younger man's statement, it still stung. Turning around, he noted Starsky's haggard appearance—the drunken gleam in his eyes and how his body slightly swayed, to and fro as he struggled to remain still and upright, rooted in place—and mournfully realized that not much had changed. "But he loved you."

Starsky flinched, absorbing the words like a punch. "What do you know about love?" He frowned, his forehead wrinkling with disgust. "What do you know about me, or him for that matter?"

John shook his head dismissively; there was no point debating such things now. There was a story to adhere to protect the details Kenneth had obstinately insisted remain hidden. "Are you living here?"

"Would it matter if I was?"

"No."

"Then I am." Starsky looked around the greenhouse forlornly, reaching out his hand to carefully caress the leaves of an adjacent plant. "Someone has to keep what's left of him alive. Nobody else seemed to care what happened to any of this, so I figured it had to be me."

"I should have come sooner," John agreed. He had wanted to but there had been so much to do after his son's death. There had been arrangements to make, decisions to be made, people to notify, and there had been a great amount of corollary at home. Dorothy had fallen into a depression so immense that he wasn't sure she would ever would ever fully emerge from it; Mallory had dropped out of college and showed no interest in ever returning.

"You shouldn't be here at all," Starsky said.

"What about you? Should you be here?"

Opening his month to reply, Starsky hesitated instead, his eyes flickering with immediate anger which was quickly chased by sadness. "I'm not gonna stay forever," he said quietly, a moment later, his eyes glistening. "I just thought…I don't know. I guess I'm planning on staying until the lease runs out, then I'll figure out my next move."

"Next move? Are you thinking of embarking on a different life?"

Shrugging, Starsky didn't answer.

"I hope you don't," John said. "Like you said, someone needs to keep my son's memory alive." Holding up his hands, he indicated at their surroundings. "He once lived in this apartment; he once stood beside you nearly every day. He loved and protected you until the day he died."

"I can't think about any of that, so don't you dare bring it up." Starsky balled his hands into tight fists. "I'm not like the rest of you," he added, his quiet voice cracking with strain. "It's only been a month since we found him…"

"I know."

"…And two weeks since you buried him. It feels like he was just here laughing and smiling, playing his guitar and watering his _stupid_ plants. And now he's gone. I can't think about who he was to me or anyone else. I can't _think_ about him being _gone_, and I can't leave this place, not right now, so don't even ask me to."

"I not asking for anything from you."

"Because I can't seem to tolerate _remembering_ him," Starsky said, his angry words thick with tears, continuing on as though John hadn't said a thing. He was captive to his own thoughts, memories, and pain. "But I _can't _carry on like he never existed, because that _not _right. He was everything to me. I built my life around him and now he's gone. Somebody killed him and I don't even know why."

"You never will," John said. He was immediately remorseful for not controlling his tone, for speaking impulsively, expressing biting frustration and bitter anger over the situation rather than common grief. He wasn't angry at the Starsky for living in his son's home; he wasn't irritated by his lingering presence or inability to let go. He was grateful; it was comforting to know, that despite everything, Kenneth had found someone who could still love him as much as Starsky appeared to. "And neither will I," he added quickly. Reaching into his breast pocket, he pulled out the envelope. "I have something for you."

"What could you possibly have for me?" Starsky asked skeptically.

"Legal documents, bank account information, tiles and deeds to everything son acquired over his life. You don't have to leave this apartment, not now, not ever if you don't want to. There is no lease on this property, my son owned it."

"That can't be right."

"It is. He purchased it last year."

"No. He didn't," Starsky insisted. "He would have told me if he had. He told me everything; there isn't anything that he did that I didn't know about. There has to be some mistake."

"There is no mistake, at least not where my son's estate is concerned…"

"Estate?"

"The apartment belonged to Kenneth, so that makes it yours."

"How does that make it mine?" Starsky eyed the envelope warily. "He's dead so you're just giving it to me?"

"I'm not giving you anything," John whispered, his voice suddenly tight. "But Kenneth is. He left everything he had to you."

"Why?"

"Because he loved you; he stood by and protected you while he was alive and, even now, he wants to make sure you are taken care of."

Offering the envelope once more, John smiled sadly as Starsky finally took it, but the slight joy was short-lived, for as soon as the item was transferred to his grasp, Starsky allowed it to fall on the greenhouse floor.

"Then he should have lived."

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

**NEVER LET ME GO PART ONE**

* * *

_Long ago, and, oh, so far away, I fell in love with you before the second show. Your guitar, it sounds so sweet and clear, but you're not really here, it's just the radio. _

_-Leon Russell, Bonnie Bramlett_

* * *

**BAY CITY METRO**

**JUNE 8, 1979**

He could hear their whispers, he only pretended he couldn't.

In the far corner of Squad Room 519, David Starsky sat at his desk. Dark circles marked his under eyes, weighing them down with tired sadness, certain proof of yet another sleepless night; his clothes were wrinkled and dirty. Once tight-fitting, his torn jeans hung lose his hips; faded and threadbare, the flannel he wore been Hutch's; it had been the blond man's favorite and he had worn it often, usually paring it with the brown leather jacket that Starsky now found himself wearing more days than not.

It wasn't that he intended to repetitively wear his deceased partner's clothes, it was just that Starsky didn't really have much choice in the matter. The wardrobe was familiar and comforting; it was something tangible he could hold on to. Each t-shirt, flannel, jacket were soft articles he could touch, smell, and wear in an effort to feel less alone than he had suddenly found himself months ago. Sometimes, if he was lucky, they the clothes allowed him to pretend that Hutch was still there. Occasionally—very momentarily—they made him believe that everything had just terrible dream, that things weren't nearly as horrible as they seemed.

But the events which had come to pass were excruciating. No amount of clothing—regardless of who had once owned it —would ever change that.

Tapping his fingertips on the top of the desk, Starsky sighed heartily, struggling to concentrate on proof reading the report in front of him. Maintaining focus was difficult these days and he quickly found himself focusing on something else entirely.

Everyone was looking at him; he could feel them scrutinize him as they snuck covert glances through the tops if their eyes when they thought he wasn't paying attention. They all seemed to be waiting for something. Waiting for him to do something.

He felt a surge of anger. It wasn't enough that they had their whispers and gossip—the most of which was solely about him but a fair amount included Hutch's name, too. No, apparently, they wanted some action from him, too—as though his life wasn't enough of a side show already, as though it didn't take all the energy he could muster to push down his rage, as if he hadn't lost a colossal chunk of his will to live.

Dobey did his best to silence the office gossip when he was aware of who was starting it; Starsky still heard most of it though. The whispers said he was unreliable, that he drank too much and couldn't control his temper. They said he was danger to others and himself, and that maybe, just maybe, without Hutch by his side, he was no longer worthy or stable enough hold a badge and be entrusted with a gun.

Those rumors weren't easy to hear but they were easier to tolerate than some of the others—the gossip that hinted that Starsky and Hutch had been so much more to each other than was polite to acknowledge in most circles. Of course, he and Hutch had been more than partners and friends. What other explanation was there for Starsky's slovenly appearance? For the clothes he wore which had so obviously once belonged to someone else? For the apartment he lived in and apparently now owned? There were obvious clues to put together if anyone bothered to really look and Starsky was surrounded by detectives. The rumors and gossip he could handle—as the majority of it was true. It was the memories he had trouble contending with.

He was haunted by memories. Everything reminded him of Hutch. They had spent nearly a decade together; their personal and professional lives had become so tightly entwined that Starsky had forgotten he ever existed as a single person. Everything always came back to Hutch. How could it not? And day after day, Starsky was assaulted with memories of the past.

It was horrible being in the squad room without Hutch, where everything looked completely different and, yet, remained exactly the same. The coffee machine and filing cabinets were still neighbors at home next to Dobey's office door. The room still housed the same number of desks, although they were in much different order now.

Starsky no longer took up residence right outside the Captain's door, where Hutch and he had spent so much time. Instead, he and his new partner had been relocated to the northwest corner of the room. Dobey had thought that the change in scenery would help and Starsky played along. It didn't help. Dobey could have moved his desk to the moon and it wouldn't have mattered. It wouldn't have changed anything. But the current location of his desk was the least of Starsky's worries in the face of the things he recalled. And out of all of them, one particular memory hurt and haunted him the most. It kept him up at night, led to agonizing thoughts, violent sobs, and one-too-many drinks which facilitated yet another late arrival to Metro—or a very public mistake.

He remembered the day Hutch's body was discovered. He recalled, with overwhelming detail, what it had been like to hear the overlapping chatter filtering out of the police radio mounted beneath the Torino's dashboard. He noticed the odd note of panic in the young dispatcher's voice as she rambled on and on about a warehouse, bodies, and blood. Her words where decidedly unprofessional—her tone distinctly out-of-place for the career she had trained for. She had taken so many calls prior to that one, why was that day—that crime scene—so different from the rest?

He hadn't wanted to respond to it; he hadn't wanted to witness whatever brutality had gone down. With Hutch missing he didn't have the energy. He wasn't the least bit curious about the horrors that had unfolded in an abandoned warehouse at the edge of the docks.

But something had implored him to go.

Something had taken a hold of him, forced him to turn the Torino around, press his foot heavily to the gas pedal and speed to the scene. Though he didn't know what had made him go, he knew that what he had found there was something he would never be able to forget.

He didn't want to forget.

There was a reason officers weren't allowed to work cases concerning family members. There were reasons why under normal circumstances they were deterred from viewing the scenes.

Surrounded by uninformed officers, Starsky set widening eyes on the horrors contained in the dirty, dank warehouse. He had seen crime scenes and bodies before; he had thought he had been privy to some of the most horrifying things one human being could do to another. But he had never seen anything like this.

There was blood-spatter everywhere; its redness was somehow intensified by the foul odor permeating the space. Whatever had gone down here had been horrifying, terrible and personal. Fierce haphazard violence expended in an effort to make someone suffer, to make them die a slow, agonizing death.

In the middle of the room was a body, its lower half hidden by a predictable white coroner's sheet. Bloody and battered, its skin was decorated with an array of discoloration that accompanied broken skin, blood vessels, and bones. Distorted—devastated—by a close-proximity gunshot wound, the victim's face was nearly unrecognizable.

_Nearly._

Starsky's scream had been guttural as it echoed through the hollow building.

Surveying the squad room through downcast eyes, that scream was a noise Starsky longed to repeat now; there were those looks again, quick and covert, from the people surrounding him, his brother cops and peers. Dobey could silence the chatter but he couldn't throw a mask over the stares. The pitiful expressions made Starsky feel incredibly small; they validated the whispered rumors and made him feel that much less sure of himself and his current location. Maybe the whispers were right. Maybe, just maybe, he should be an inpatient at Cabrillo State. After all, wasn't that what happened to people who tried to kill themselves?

Or at least that was what the hot office gossip said, but for the record it hadn't actually gone down that way.

Yes, he had had a particularly rough night. Yes, he been out drinking. And, yes, one thing had led to another and he had found himself at Sweet Alice's abode. But, no, he hadn't slept with her. No, he hadn't ingested the drugs she gave him with the intention of ending his life. It was just that he hadn't thought about how the drugs would mix with the alcohol, what they could and did do if combined. And, yes, the whole debacle did seem stupid now, though, at the time it had been necessary.

Back then he needed to forget and now it seemed like all he could do was remember.

Hutch's body had been bloody, battered and bruised, laying lifeless on the floor of a building he had no business ever being in. The pain attached to the recollection was horrific, but even given the opportunity to erase the image from his mind, Starsky was certain he wouldn't dare. It wasn't right to forget any of the memories he existed in—no matter how painful or difficult to accept—hoping for such a thing seemed wrong somehow, because Hutch had once been there—sitting across or standing beside him in this very squad room and Starsky never wanted to forget that.

Groaning, Starsky tried, once again, to focus on the report in front of him. The words ran together and he had no desire to understand what they all meant. Just because he hadn't written it, that didn't mean he needed to agonize over it; he was sure that his partner, William Cooper, had done all the details justice.

_Fuck it. _

Sighing heartily, he scribbled his signature at the bottom of the page, giving little attention to neatness or authenticity. Gathering the report, he made his way across the room, tossed it carelessly into Captain Dobey's inbox. Lingering in place, he waited for his new partner to notice his absence from the opposite side of their shared desk. It took a few moments but Cooper finally did; his dark eyes canvassed the room before setting on Starsky.

Jetting his thumb at the hallway, Starsky nodded, mouthed an inaudible farewell, and pushed through the transparent glass door. It was too early to leave but that wouldn't stop him. He had ignored enough whispers and endured enough curious stares for the day; he couldn't tolerate any more. He needed quiet and space; he needed to go someplace where people would ignore him, where he could drink remnants of the day away—and maybe the memories of the last few months, too.

He was standing in front of the closed elevator doors when Cooper's eager voice rang through the hallway. "Starsky, hey, wait up! Wherever you're headed, I'm going too."

Xx

Squinting against the rays of sun assaulting him through the windshield, Starsky grabbed his sunglasses from his shirt pocket and put them on. It was a beautiful day. Sunny, bright, and warm, it was damn near picturesque; provoking exuberance and optimism, it was the perfect California day for anyone who had the luxury of spending the afternoon outside.

Starsky, however, was annoyed, both by the buoyant weather and claustrophobic confides of Cooper's tiny car. The 1972 Datsun was a two-door, pea green disaster. The exterior was full of dents and dings that come from parking too close to the cars in a grocery store parking lot; the interior was cramped, leaving little room for both a driver and a passenger to sit side-by-side in the front seat—let alone two grown men.

Hutch would have loved Cooper's car. Starsky hated it.

"Word on the street is that coma boy woke up," Cooper stated, finally breaking their extended silence.

"Oh, yeah?" Starsky snorted bitterly. He didn't have to ask who his partner was referring to; "coma boy" had become a brusque nickname for Michael Bennett. The man whom had been found lying beside Hutch's body. However, he didn't know how Cooper could have come across the information. No one in their professional circle was privy to anything regarding the investigation—Hutch's death, or Bennett's survival—due to its abhorrent and perplexing nature, it had been swiftly appropriated by the FBI.

If Starsky was honest, he was angry about it. He was even angrier with himself for not having the energy or courage to stand up and demand to be put on the case. He should be doing something. It wasn't some stranger who had been murdered; it was Hutch. Instead, he found himself incapable of doing anything.

"What streets are you hanging out on these days?"

Shaking his head, Cooper ignored the question. "What's the plan?" he asked, proficiently changing the subject. "You wanna take a drive around, watch and wait for someone to do something suspicious? Or do you have a destination in mind?"

"No destination," Starsky lied. He had intended to go to the bar on 3rd street that he had begun frequenting since Huggy cut him off, to sit and drink for the remainder of the day. But in Cooper's company that wasn't an option. "And aren't you a little past the watch and wait phase? I haven't done that routine since I was in uniform."

"That can't be true. A stake-out is essentially a watch and wait, isn't it?"

"That's different."

"How?"

"Because in a stake-out you already have a suspect you're lookin' to nail, you're just waiting for to them to do something stupid. A watch and wait is aimless; you don't know who you're looking for or why."

"Oh, that's right."

Starsky snorted. He couldn't decide if Cooper was being purposefully dense to make conversation or if he really was that stupid. He wasn't—of course—Dobey wouldn't have accepted him into the Zebra Unit if he was. No, the truth of matter was that Cooper was very, very smart.

Sergeant Detective William Cooper, though no Kenneth Hutchinson, was a solid guy and a respectable cop. Like Hutch, he had transferred to Bay City PD from a small law enforcement outfit somewhere in the Midwest just prior to Hutch's disappearance. Cooper had become an active member of Zebra 3 after Hutch's death. He ran investigations by the book and completed reports on time, quickly becoming a favorite of Dobey. He was a real up-and-comer, eager, enthusiastic, and virtuous. He was zealously committed to doing the "right thing" and had a penchant for being a bit of a brown-noser. He often arrived at Metro early and stayed late visiting with Dobey behind closed doors, seemingly trying to earn favor in their superior's eyes by offering to help in whatever way he could.

Seven years Starsky's junior, Cooper was handsome, educated, and tall. A few inches taller than Hutch had been, he had a good five inches on Starsky and seemed to tower over him whenever they stood next to each other. If Starsky had been younger, he may have been intimidated by his new partner's height, put-off by how officious his stare could be, dark chocolate orbs which seemed to be analyzing and noting even the tiniest detail—from the mildest deviation in stance to the slightest hint of dark circles beneath his eyes. Starsky didn't know why his partner would be considering him the way he often did—with a stare that seemed to linger a little too long; it was as though he was looking for something, or waiting for something rather—but he knew he didn't have the energy to care. After all, they weren't friends and they were never going to be. Maybe under different circumstances— in a different time when Hutch was still alive—they could have been, but too much had changed to expect such a thing now.

"What do you know about coma boy?" Starsky pressed. The previously disclosed information wasn't sitting right. He felt a sudden anger, the inevitable sting of a gaping wound. Starsky hadn't been there when Hutch had died, someone else had. "Who do you know that would talk to you about him?" And what did they say? What did Cooper get to know about Bennett while Starsky was not allowed to know anything at all? He had never met the man who Cooper had so flippantly referred to as coma boy; he had no inclination what would have brought Michael Bennett and Kenneth Hutchinson together.

"Just people." Cooper shrugged. "That's not really all that important."

"According to who? Who the hell do you know, Cooper? The Feds took that case. Those details are on lockdown. The only info we know about that kid or…" Starsky hesitated, unable to utter Hutch's name. "…or about, you know, is that what happened is something that did. So who the hell would talk to you?"

"I don't know anyone. Look, Starsky, it was just some guy."

"Word on the street," Starsky reiterated.

"Okay, so it wasn't exactly _on the street_," Cooper conceded. "The guy approached me at Metro, he knew I was your partner, said that maybe I could pass it on to you."

"Oh, yeah?" Starsky scoffed bitterly. "Why would somebody do that?"

"I don't know, man. He seemed pretty intent about you knowing, though."

"What did he look like?"

Frowning, Cooper hesitated. "He was just some guy."

"Just some guy?" Starsky challenged. "You're telling me that some random guy walked up to you at Metro just to tell you that Michael Bennett woke up because he thought that I oughta know and you didn't think to ask who he was or why he came by the information?"

"Well... yeah."

"Bullshit."

"What bullshit? It's the truth."

"It sounds like a tall tale to me," Starsky snapped. "You're a cop; you pay attention to weird behavior for a living and you're saying that you don't even remember what the guy looked like? That's stupid, and we both know you're not stupid. You know exactly what he looked like, so don't get clever and coy on me now."

"He was official," Cooper caved. "Suit, tie."

"FBI official?"

"Maybe."

"Oh, you're really something else, kid…"

Starsky paused, his attention momentarily drawn to a tall blonde man wearing a flannel shirt walking down the sidewalk. From afar, he looked so much like Hutch that Starsky had to remind that it wasn't. It couldn't be, and once they passed him, a good look at the blonde's face quickly erased all suspicion.

"You were saying something?" Cooper prompted noncommittally.

"Yeah… No…" Shaking his head, Starsky struggled to shake the sidewalk blonde out of his mind. It wouldn't disappear so easily. "Look, Cooper, there ain't nothing going on today. I don't think that knocking off a couple hours early is gonna hurt anything."

"I don't know."

Cooper may not have been sure, but Starsky was. "Listen," he said authoritatively, "Knock off or don't knock off, it doesn't really matter to me as long as you pull over and let me out."

"Why?"

"Just do it."

Cooper complied, switching lanes quickly and negotiating his small car in the open parallel spot. Shifting the car into park, he turned in his seat and grasped Starsky's forearm to keep him from springing from the vehicle. "What are you doing?" he asked.

"Don't worry about it," Starsky said, forcing a wide smiled he hoped would put Cooper at ease. "Enjoy the rest of your day. I'll see you tomorrow."

Cooper wouldn't be placated so easily. "Starsky, we are in the middle of porno row, where the hell are you going to go on foot?"

"I'll figure it out."

"You'll figure it out?" Cooper repeated desperately. "Where are you headed? Another bar. What are you gonna do when you get there? Drink yourself unconscious. Dobey's already warned you about kicking off early to go get drunk and Huggy's cut you off. There's nothing but bad news down here, buddy. Dark alleys and rooms that'll only get you into trouble come morning. All the bars are full up of nasty characters looking for a fight."

"Yeah, I know." Jumping out of the car, Starsky slammed the door forcefully and stalked away. "I'm one of them."

Xx

Despite Cooper's worry—or perhaps in spite of it—Starsky didn't spend the afternoon in a bar.

As his current partner had warned, he didn't need another lecture from Dobey, or yet another blemish on his already reddened personnel file. So, instead, he walked. Wandering through the city, he didn't fit in with any of the people swarming the sidewalks. None of them seemed to pay him any attention and he ignored them, completely losing himself in impassiveness and eventually a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag that he had purchased at a corner liquor store.

Mindless step after step, pushing past people, vehicles, and neighborhoods he didn't bother committing to memory, he traveled with no destination in mind. It was only 15 square miles of city— realistically, he had only walked about nine of them—yet somehow his lonely excursion felt too long and too short at the same time. It was well after sunset when he came upon Venice Place. The building was comforting under the glow of the streetlights as was Hutch's LTD parked curbside in its rightful place in front of the building. The car was where it always had been and where it would remain until the end of time—if Starsky had his way.

He snorted. It wasn't as though city officials were demanding the car be relocated. The neighborhood parking officials seemed as unaffected by the LTD's stagnant presence as the rest of the of the world. The vehicle sat unmoved and untouched since the day Hutch had parked it there. Wherever he was headed the day he disappeared, the vehicle had been left behind. This was a troubling detail that still didn't make much sense. There had been no struggle in the apartment, no phone calls or visitors to prompt Hutch to leave that day. Starsky was certain of all this because the morning Hutch had disappeared had followed a night they had spent together. When Hutch had rose, quietly dressed in the unassuming t-shirt and jeans they eventually found his body dressed in, he had left a sleeping Starsky behind in his bed.

Starsky had awoken later and given Hutch's absence little thought. It wasn't unusual for Hutch embark on a solo early morning run. And when morning turned to afternoon and eventually night with no sign of his wayward partner, it was anger which had consumed Starsky, not worry, because it was in the blond man's nature to vanish for long periods of time. He would be gone for hours, days, and very occasionally weeks. Starsky didn't know what Hutch did when he left or why he felt the need to; Hutch never volunteered the details and the one instance when Starsky had asked, Hutch's reply was far from satisfying.

_"__Don't you ever need to be alone?"_ Hutch had asked, deflecting Starsky's prying question with another.

_"__Sometimes," _Starsky had admitted. _"But I tell you when I want space. I don't just leave." _

_"__I never just leave. I say goodbye and I call you while I'm away." _

_"__There's no difference between the goodbyes you say when you're planning on leaving for a while or when we decided to spend the night apart. And you rarely call me when you leave. You're just… gone for an unpredictable length of time and then… you're just back, acting like you never left at all." _

"_Oh, come on, Starsk. You're not a teenage kid chasing after a date. You have me; I'm right here, by your side, most of the time." _

_"__And what about rest of the time? Where are you then?" _

Hutch had smiled, his convivial demeanor threating to encourage Starsky to abandon the questions entirely. There was something about the look in Hutch's eyes, sparkling happily yet still warning him to stop. He wouldn't get answer, and he wouldn't like the disagreement that would unfold if he continued pushing for one. _"You're just gonna have to trust that I'll always come back when I have to leave, and you're gonna have love me enough to just let me go." _

Bottom lip trembling, Starsky sucked it between his teeth, then bit down, hard. He wouldn't cry. Not here, not now, standing on the sidewalk like a blubbering drunk. He was tired of crying, feeling overwhelmed by loneliness, sickened by profound nature of his loss—though it was better than the alternative. Some days his mood shifted drastically and he became so overcome by apathy and exhaustion that he felt nothing at all. The dramatic fluctuations between the such differing emotions where startling when he thought about them, so he tried not to. There was nothing that could change his current situation, nothing that could make life better or worse as he somehow suddenly existed in some purgatorial reality where his partner, best friend, and lover had been suddenly and savagely killed.

It wasn't out of the ordinary for Hutch to leave. The morning Starsky awoke without his partner still lying next to him in bed, Starsky hadn't been worried—he had decided to trust his partner, to love him without question, just the way he was. Worry was an emotion that had come much later.

Days later, in fact. When enough time had passed with no word from Hutch. When Starsky's anger finally slipped away and Dobey had expressed his own concern. A missing officer report had been filed then, both it and his gruff Captain's worry serving to somehow make the situation feel suddenly real to Starsky. It wasn't out of the ordinary for Hutch to leave, to disappear for periods of time, Dobey's palpable agitation about his wayward officer's wellbeing and whereabouts was. Dobey had never been worried about Hutch before, regardless of how long he was gone or how suddenly he had left.

Despite Starsky's determination not to cry, the pain radiating from his lip, still clenched between his teeth, only prompted more tears. Tasting the faintest hint of blood, he released his lip with a thick sigh and angrily swiped the back of his free hand over his eyes, removing the offending tears. Dropping his hand to hang limply at his side, he lifted the other, bringing the paper bag covered bottle to his lips. Though the bottle was nearly empty, he drank greedily, trying and failing to ignore the bitter questions circling his mind.

Who could have killed Hutch? And would they want to?

He couldn't think of anyone in their professional past who would have the guts to murder Hutch the way he was killed. Sure, they had made their fair share of enemies over the years, put way and pissed-off enough wise guys, whipos, perps, and hoods to warrant some kind of angry retribution. Guys like the Coleman or Clancy brothers, Pucker, or that other guy—the one whose name Starsky couldn't seem to ever remember—were all fierce characters who immediately came to mind, but those guys where small change in comparison to what had happened to Hutch. He had taken, beaten, tortured and held for days before finally being allowed die. None of the perps Starsky could recall would have had the brains to pull off something of that scale off; they wouldn't have expelled the effort. Their hits would have been quick, dirty in nature and clean in execution, not overly violent or drawn out over days. And they would have hit Starsky and Hutch together, not alone. Or if they had hit one and not the other, then the one left living would have understood why the other was gone.

It couldn't have been any of them, because Starsky didn't understand anything that had taken place. And out of all the events he didn't understand the most troubling detail still remained, rising up to haunt him in the worst moment possible as it often did: Though Starsky hadn't been with him, Hutch hadn't been alone when he died. Michael Bennett had been lying comatose at his side.

Starsky felt a surge of anger. _Who the fuck was coma boy?_

What the hell did he have to do with Hutch? What had brought them together? Why was this stranger allowed to be with Hutch while Starsky was left behind, waiting and agonizing first about his partner's wellbeing and safety before eventually becoming irreparably tortured by the details—or lack-there-of—of his untimely death?

He didn't want to think about it—any of it. Removing the lip of the bottle from his mouth, he clenched it tightly, the brown paper bag crinkling in protest of his grip, then, grunting, he lifted his arm, intent on throwing the bottle as hard and far as he could. But, gaze shifting, he lowered his arm as quickly as he had lifted it and gasped.

Widening eyes frozen on the LTD, he could barely believe what he was seeing; it was a wonder he hadn't noticed it moments before. Someone was sitting in the driver's seat. The bottle shattered on the pavement as he dropped it, his attention stolen from the alcohol, transferred and fixated on the blond-haired person who dared disturb Hutch's car. For one horrible moment his heart fluttered, his hopes rising desperately.

_Blond._

The person sitting the car had blond hair. Hutch had blond hair; he was the last one who had sat in the car. It couldn't be—somewhere deep down, Starsky knew that—but that didn't stop his feet from moving. It didn't cease the full-bodied hopefulness overcoming him as he rushed toward the vehicle.

It couldn't be, but what if it was? What if the whole thing had been a terrible dream or a horrible mistake? What if Hutch was really still alive, his body warm and sturdy, his smile wide and jubilant as he watched Starsky approach?

Starsky's legs were shaking by the time he came to stop beside the LTD's driver side door. The window was rolled down; there was no glass to distort the person sitting inside. Nothing to trick his tired and muddled mind or fuel his hope. His first reflex was to laugh, then, as his optimism vanished and his grief consumed him once more, all he wanted to do was cry.

It couldn't be, and it wasn't.

"Oh," Starsky whispered, his posture deflating. "It's only you."

It was stupid to think such as silly thing. He blamed the alcohol for distorting his interpretation, eroding his judgement, and stifling his ability to reason away his impulsive thought. It was ridiculous to mistake this person for Hutch. Though they shared the same hair and color, the person staring at Starsky couldn't have been more different than his deceased partner. Hutch was gone—dead and buried in the Midwest—and this person was female.

Legs curled up beneath her petite form, Sweet Alice sat in the very same seat Hutch had occupied so many times before. Eyes assessing him lazily, she stared at him for a moment before her lips curled into a sad smile.

"And just who were you expectin' me to be?" she drawled softly. Her sluggish enunciation confirmed what Starsky didn't need to be told. He hadn't been the only one reaching for a substance in an effort to numb away the difficulty of the day. "Oh," she added, looking at the dashboard forlornly. "I shouldn't be in here, should I?"

"It's fine," Starsky lied. It wasn't; it was as far away from fine as it could possibly be. Hutch's car had remained untouched for weeks. Though the FBI had confiscated Hutch's homicide case, it didn't appear as though they were doing any investigating. No one had shown up to canvass Venice Place or the LTD for clues. No one had questioned Starsky, which was just another odd detail in a series of extraordinarily odd events.

"It's just that…" Alice hesitated, closing her eyes and inhaling a deep breath to steady her voice. "I miss him so much, you know?"

"I know."

"Of course, you do."

Tearfully, Alice stared at Starsky vacantly. It was though she was looking through him and at someone else completely and Starsky figured that she was. He wasn't the only one whose brain and eyes played nasty tricks on them; he wasn't the only one so desperate to see someone who was destined to never really be there.

"You understand," she repeated, the words even softer than before. "Of course, _you_ do."

There weren't many people who knew what Starsky and Hutch had been to each other, the fierceness of their bond, the intensity of their connection. What had been disguised as a cohesive partnership and friendship had been profound romantic love. Alice was one of only two who knew the truth. At the time the disclosure had been far from planned—regretful even—but now Starsky was grateful she knew, because he was convinced, she was the only one who really understood his pain.

Alice had loved Hutch too. Endlessly harboring an overconcentrated crush, she had loved him from afar and sometimes even up close, but it was Starsky who had won his partner's love and affection. And in the wake of the loss of a man they had both loved so deeply, Starsky and Alice found themselves seeking each other out. What had started as an acquaintanceship, quickly turned into friendship, then slowly transformed into something else. Something erroneous and grim. Pain bound Starsky and Alice together now. It was their grief that was so deep and vast it demanded they cling to one another and hold on tightly as they could.

"Whatcha been doing?" Alice asked. "You smell like you've been sippin' something strong enough to mellow your world right up. Did it work? _Please_, tell me it did."

Feeling a sharp sting along his jawline, a telltale sign he was in for a bought of tears he wouldn't be able stop or will away, Starsky set his gaze on a patch of sidewalk in the distance. He couldn't bear looking at Alice any longer; he didn't have the courage to answer her pleading question honestly.

Drinking hadn't helped anything. It never really did.


	3. Chapter 3

**BAY CITY GENERAL HOSPITAL**

**JUNE 15, 1979**

Surrounded by blackness, darkness was all he knew.

The air felt fluid, composed entirely of murky liquid, constantly shifting, ebbing and rising around his stagnant form. He knew it wasn't water, but he wasn't sure what it was. It felt thicker, dirtier, stickier and heavier than any liquid he had ever known, and it smelled, filling his nostrils with a foul stench. Charred and rotten, it was the aftermath of something bad. He was certain if he tried to remember, if he really concentrated on recognizing the liquid and the smell, that he would understand what they were and why they surrounded him now. But he didn't want to do that. He didn't want to think or remember, not in this world, not when the space surrounding him seemed so inherently bad.

And besides, he didn't need to remember, that was what the voices were for.

Ebbing and flowing with the liquid tide, they alternated between shouts and whispers, depending on the significance and consequence of what was being said. It was only the screams that echoed; painful, desperate pleas that reverberated around him in the darkness.

_"This is all your fault!"_ a powerful voice boomed_. "None of this would have had to come to pass if it weren't for you." _

_"Please,"_ a second voice pleaded. _"You don't have to do this! Think about it; you know you don't!" _

_"It doesn't matter,"_ a third voice chimed in. _"You may as well quit your screaming; it isn't going to change anything. What's done is done. He took us here and he's not going to let us go."_

_"But,"_ The second voice said. _"But that can't—!"_

_"But nothing,"_ the third said firmly. _"He intends to kills us and pleading isn't going to change that. What's done is done." _

_"No,"_ the second voice said, refusing to believe. _"No… No… No!"_ It repeated the single word incessantly before erupting into a hopeless, shrill wail.

He cringed at disembodied sound, ebbing and flowing, echoing around where he stood rooted in place by his own hesitation. He was paralyzed by the palpable pain embedded in the putrid liquid surround him. Still, he didn't fear the pain or the darkness or the whispers surrounding him, the memories of words once said under dreadful circumstances. He recognized all of the voices; one had been his been his own, the other two belonged to people he once knew, and all of them had been right.

What was done was done; none of what had taken place had had to happen, but it was all his fault.

It was from the depths of this darkness that he suddenly awoke—though he couldn't quite remember falling asleep. The voices were gone, replaced by a steady stream of mechanical beeping. Comforting and all-too-familiar, it was sound that slowly prompted him to open his eyes.

It was a struggle—as it always was. His eyes were dry, tight and gritty beneath eyelids that felt too heavy to be pried open by sheer will. His body felt heavy, foreign and displaced on the hospital mattress. His muscles were weak and out of practice; his extremities had been overtaken either by severe numbness or a stubborn ineptitude that refused to acknowledge or correctly decipher even the easiest instruction from his brain. He was immobile, mute and dramatically confused.

In his dreams he knew everything, but once awake he recalled—and comprehended—almost nothing.

Finally, he opened one eye, then the other, and peered slowly around the confines of the room. The walls were white and sterile, a stark contrast from his dreams. The blinds were drawn, only allowing the slightest hint of the starry night sky. Twin hard-backed chairs were arranged against the wall on the right side of the bed. One sat vacant while the other was occupied. A man sat silently, his legs crossed studiously and gaze set determinedly on the book in his lap. The man he recognized, not from before—whatever life had been like when he hadn't been confined to this bed—but from more recently.

Tweedy, donnish and decidedly middle-aged, nothing about the man was remarkable. His salt and pepper beard and hair were short and clean, his reading glasses rested high on the bridge of his nose, and his clothes were formal yet comfortable; he wore outfits comprised of expensive khakis and sweaters, items that were bound to wrinkle and crease with his extended seated vigils next to the hospital bed.

There often was a woman seated beside the bed too. Appearing only slightly younger than the man, she was well kept. She dressed young for her age, adorning her body with styles and colors normally displayed by women in their 20's rather than 50's. Her hair was bleached blond, hiding her strands of silver, but she wore little make up, just enough to even her skin tone and define her blue eyes.

When together, the man and woman made for a visually interesting pair. One stuffy and studious, the other modish and congenial, neither appeared fit for the other, and yet, somehow, they were. When they were together there seemed to be a deep love and affinity between them that even the most unfamiliar spectator could discern.

Swallowing reflexively, he blinked drowsily, struggling to give titles to the two people he so often saw. It took a few moments but the information eventually came, rising sluggishly from his recent memories to the forefront of his mind. This man sitting beside him was his father and the woman, whose immediate absence was unremarkable, was his mother. The knowledge was both comforting and troublesome; while he was happy to recall even these small facts, something about the people and titles seemed wrong but he didn't understand what.

Venturing a deep breath, he slowly lifted his left arm to rub at his eyes. Though he would have preferred moving his other hand, it wasn't working correctly; he couldn't feel it. The only proof he had that he still in possession of his right arm—and the entire right side of his body for that matter—was that when he managed to tilt his head, peer down and take stock of himself, he could see his body seemed intact. He didn't have words to label what he was seeing; descriptors like torso, arms, legs, hands, and feet had no meaning to him. He couldn't begin to think of such words. Still, he cringed as the IV needle pinched his arm. His inability to define sensations didn't make him immune to them. Though he felt pain, he didn't hasten his movement. Instead, he extended his arm further and further, his fuzzy brain slowly piecing together that the pain was a consequence of his action. He relished the knowledge and savored the stinging radiating through his arm. It grounded him in the moment in a way nothing else could.

"Michael stop," Daniel Bennett instructed from his seat beside the bed. "Don't do that."

Michael didn't stop. He couldn't. The sensation in his arm from the pulling of the IV needle was sharp, searing, and much more real than anything surrounding him. Without the pain he might have been able to convince himself that this—the bed, the hospital room, and the man sitting beside him—were all just another dream. A light dream sent to either confuse him or counterbalance the darkness of his reoccurring dreams.

Daniel's book made a fluttering noise as he stood and it fell to the floor with a heavy thud. Wrapping his large fingers around Michael's wrist, he pulled his son's hand away.

"You're gonna rip out your IV again and we don't want that." He smiled warmly, pressing Michael's arm to the mattress and holding it still. "Don't misunderstand me, son, I am thrilled you've regained some of your mobility. I just don't want impulsive actions to be detrimental to your recovery. You've just only woken up from your latest surgery. Your face and neck are still very swollen and bruised. You're supposed to be keeping quiet and still as not to cause yourself further harm. I know it's diffucult, but you must stay as calm as you can."

Closing his eyes, Michael was overcome by panic as he tried to pull his hand free, but he was so weak and his father held tight, keeping restrained. He didn't like this new sensation, the pressure on his wrist or the intense terror he felt yet couldn't name, brought on by not being in control and being denied simple control over the movement of his arm; there was something familiar about it. Dominating and threatening, though he didn't understand how he could feel that way toward anything his father did. Daniel was peaceful, serious and loving, and Michael didn't understand this feeling; he didn't understand anything at all.

How many times had he woken up like this? How long had he been here? This wasn't right; it couldn't be. Why couldn't he recall why or how things had come to feel so wrong?

"It's okay, Michael," Daniel whispered. "Just relax. You're safe. It's okay. Everything is going to be okay, now."

Despite his confusion, Michael knew it wasn't okay. Things were as far away from okay as they could possibly be.

He was helpless to calm his anxiety. His arms moving by reflex alone rather than any order or direction from his brain, he was incapable of controlling or directing them. He flailed impotently; he was weak as his father held strong, thick fingers grasping his wrists in tight fists and pressing and holding them immobile on the bed.

Soon a nurse rushed into the room—not to assist Michael with his confusion, but to help his father as the hospital staff so often did.

A few frustrated tears escaped Michael's tightly closed eyelids as more drugs were being flushed through his IV, sending him back into the deep, dark depths of unconsciousness.


	4. Chapter 4

**VENICE PLACE**

**JULY 12, 1979**

Another morning came.

A small patch of sunlight filtered through a gap in the alcove's lightly colored curtains, coming unnoticed by the still form in the bed. Huddled in a tight ball, Starsky lay in the center of the mattress. Blanket pulled over his head, it wasn't until a passing car backfired, its explosive pounding sounding a little too much like a gunshot, that he suddenly awoke.

Startled, he threw the blanket off and sprung to his feet, breathing heavily as his body settled into a defensive posture, elbows bent, hands clenched in tight fists in front of his chest. It took a few seconds for him to realize nothing was wrong—or rather that his surroundings had remained wrong in the same stagnate way they had been since the day he discovered Hutch was dead.

He groaned as the sad reality sank back in, chasing away the cheerful images of his dream.

He had been dreaming of Hutch, as he so often did. Some dreams were good, others were bad, and some were downright horrifying. The best of them seemed like memories, imaginings of he and Hutch doing the things they had always done. Driving around in the Torino, sitting at Huggy's, their shared desk at Metro, or the couch at one of their homes, smiling and laughing, talking about work or something of lesser importance. They were always together in the good dreams. Happy, safe, and secure as they remained side-by-side, each protected by the presence of the other.

In the other dreams, however, he knew no such pleasures. They ranged from a scale of bad to infinitely worse, haunting him with terrifying depictions of the warehouse in which Hutch's body was discovered. The carnage he dreamed of unspeakable; the tormenting details of what he had actually seen were somehow amplified by the confines of the nightmare. Scattered disembodied extremities and pools of congealed blood, skin, muscle tissue, shards of bone, and brain matter, all splashed across the ground, intermixed with blood spatter.

There was always so much blood in those dreams, because, in reality, there had seemed to be an infinite amount. The crime scene Starsky had walked into had contained too much blood for either victim to survive. Still, miraculously, one did.

Hutch had died but a man named Bennett had lived and there didn't seem to be any sense to be made about why.

Starsky shook his head to clear the thought. He didn't want to think about it today—or any other day for that matter. The motion seemed to waken his headache, or perhaps this was the first time he was noticing the pain, dull and incessant, pulsating behind his eye sockets and drawing attention to the nausea turning his stomach.

He had drank too much last night—as he so often did now that Hutch was gone. He had drank too much the night before last, the night before that one, and the one before that one, too. In fact, standing, clad only in wrinkled boxer shorts, his eyes squinted and blood-shot, Starsky couldn't recall the last time he hadn't drank himself through a day or night.

He had an occasional fleeting notion that his alcohol consumption was something he should care about. It was a thought that was particularly loud on mornings like this, with his pounding head and churning stomach, his dry mouth and foul-smelling breath, all predictable outcomes of the empty bottle of Jim Beam discarded on the floor next to his bed.

He was late for work _again_; no amount of excuses or lack-there-of would be enough to protect him from Dobey's lecture. There was no amount of aspirin that was going to be able to assuage his headache, no amount of greasy food that was going to be able to soothe the sickness of his tender stomach, because though the alcohol certainly intensified these symptoms, they weren't the cause. He would have felt sick with or without the drinking, because Hutch was gone.

And with all the things Starsky should have cared about this seemed to be the only one he truly could. His grief consumed him a little each day, pulling him further away from the life he and Hutch had once shared and closer to a shell of a person he was certain Hutch wouldn't want him to be or recognize. It was a thought that always came on mornings like this, and it always hurt in the same way. Hutch wouldn't approve of his behavior; even though he was dead, he wouldn't want Starsky to live this way.

It was the guilt born from this thought that led him to dismiss it. Wanting to think of anything else, he recalled another memory he would never forget.

Standing in the hallway to Metro, he had been furious about a decision he hadn't been involved in. This had been years ago now. The first year he had worked under Dobey, a mere month after he and his closest friend, John Colby, had secured a partnership on the captain's prestigious Zebra Squad. Colby and he had gone through the police academy together, an experience that had left them tight-knit. They had leaned one another while in uniform, meticulously planning their next move.

They were made of the same thing, he and Colby—or so Starsky had thought at the time. Both sons of police officers, they had lost their fathers as youths; both had been drafted to serve in a war they had wanted no part of; and after being discharged from the army, both had found themselves applying to the police academy, searching for something they couldn't explain. Instead, they found each other and hints of the men they would eventually become. When they had made Zebra Squad together things had been good—no, they had been great. Then Hutch came along, appearing out of seemingly nowhere to destroy everything Starsky and Colby had worked so hard to obtain.

Things had been so different then. Colby had been upset when Dobey made the decision to dissolve their partnership; Starsky had been furious.

Cornering Hutch in the stairwell leading to the parking garage, he had blocked the exit door. Leaning up against it, he crossed his arms, his body alive with anger, his eyes narrowing with disdain.

Hutch hadn't flinched. In fact, eyes rolling skyward, he didn't show any indications of being intimidated. Impatient, inconvenienced maybe, not intimated or the tiniest bit afraid.

_"What are you doing?"_ Hutch asked eventually when Starsky showed no sign of moving.

_"Dobey talked to me this morning" _Starsky said, his statement sounding like an accusation. _"He said you and I were gonna be partners here on out. So, I thought I'd come introduce myself to you." _

_"I don't need an introduction," _Hutch said. _"I know who you are." _

_"No, I don't think you do." _Starsky shook his head, his anger pulsating in his chest over the thought of being so easily dismissed. _"David Starsky," _he said, expelling his name on a deep exhale. He extended his hand for an introductory handshake, an overly gracious offer considering his mood.

Eyeing Starsky's hand, Hutch didn't lift his own; he laughed instead.

Dobey had said Hutch was a real up-and-comer, courageous, virtuous, educated, and tall, but in that moment all Starsky saw was arrogance. A trait he despised more than any other.

Who was this guy who dressed in a white button up shirt, tie and slacks and looked less like an undercover cop and more like a narc? Who the hell did Hutchinson think he was?

Starsky stepped away from the door and closer to Hutch, lowering his hand and his voice to a dangerous whisper_. "I'm trying to be nice to you and you laugh at me? You're right, buddy. You have no idea who I am." _Or what you took from me today, he thought. _"You know, I used to be Zebra-One and now I'm Zebra-fucking-Three thanks to you. And I'm not happy about it, something, that as my new partner, you should probably worry about."_

_"Oh, so I'm only here to keep you happy?" _Hutch asked. Standing tall, he crossed his arms and looked Starsky up and down.

Starsky felt oddly on display. Uncomfortable under Hutch's officious stare, blue eyes which seemed to be analyzing and noting the tiniest detail as his stare lingered a little too long.

What was the guy looking for? What was he waiting for or expecting him to do?

_"Is that what Colby did?" _Hutch asked. His voice was low but it carried a dangerous telling edge. _"Did he do everything he could to keep you happy?"_

Starsky didn't respond. He wouldn't—not that he needed to; the question coupled the knowing glint in Hutch's eyes told him that this blond stranger already knew more about his life than he wanted to share.

_"I hate to break it to you, kiddo," _Hutch said. _"Your boy, Colby, isn't going to make it as a detective." _He tilted his head, grimacing with false regret. _"He's not made out of the right stuff. It's a good thing the two of you are cutting ties now. You don't want to sucked into the mess he's creating."_

_"What's that supposed to mean?" _Starsky challenged. Who said anything about cutting ties?

_"You tell me. You're the one who's so close to the guy. Dobey said you were smart. Think about who Colby is and who you are, where he's headed and where you want to be. You'll figure it out." _Moving toward the door, Hutch smiled as he pushed it open. _"Don't worry, kiddo," _he added, repeating the annoying appellation._ "You May have lost Colby today but you gained me. You're good a detective and I'm way better; together you and I are going to make one hell of a team."_

Forehead wrinkling, Starsky scowled at Hutch's retreating form. _"I'll tell you one thing, Golden Boy, you better live up to all the hype!" _

Eventually he had.

Hutch was everything Dobey had told Starsky he would be—and more. And eventually Starsky did lose Colby, though he had tried his best to hang on. They drifted apart slowly. Their lives becoming as different as they once were the same. Now he and Colby were strangers and Hutch was dead.

The phone rang. Its incessant volume dissolved the memory and reminded Starsky of his headache. He wanted to ignore the phone; to avoid what was probably just yet another chastising call from Dobey or a late-morning wellness check from Huggy Bear—both of which had become habits of late. He wasn't in the mood for a lecture or to comfort Huggy's worry about his wellbeing with lies. Striding to the ringing phone, he decided to participate in neither, lifting the phone receiver off the cradle only to slam it down once again, effectively silencing the overbearing sound.

His headache pounding with renewed vigor, he strode to the bathroom with a groan. Opening the medicine cabinet, he retrieved a bottle of aspirin from the shelf and popped the cap off carelessly, allowing it to fall on the floor next to his feet. Tilting the bottle, he poured its contents into his palm, then tilted most of the tiny white pills back into the glass jar, keeping only three. He placed the bottle in the side of the sink and pushed the medicine cabinet door closed to get it out of his way; glancing up as the mirror moved, he caught a glimpse of his reflection.

His eyes were sunken and hollow, his expression tired and bleak; his once olive complexion carried a sickly yellow hue. He looked exhausted, devastated, and old. The misery and fatigue he was familiar with; it was the deep lines etched in the corners of his eyes he didn't recognize. Coupled with the sadness in his expression, they made him look more like a stranger than the person he believed he was.

_What am I doing?_

Clenching his fist closed, the aspirin became chalky power in the palm of his hand.

_What the hell am I supposed to do? _

It was with automatic movements that he eventually climbed into the shower. Washing himself numbly with the soap and shampoo Hutch once used before climbing out and wrapping himself in the robe Hutch once wore. Matted and worn, the robe was bright orange. A color that was so lively it was certain inspire sunny and cheerful thoughts—or at least that was what Hutch had said when he purchased it years ago. But wrapping it tightly around himself, pulling up the collar, grasping its worn corners and refusing to let go, all Starsky felt was pain.

His knees went weak and he sunk to the floor. Grief weighed him down, freezing him in place on the cold linoleum floor. He sat there for countless minutes, tortured by his inability to accept or tolerate the truth of his own thoughts. Hutch wouldn't like his behavior, but Starsky didn't know how to change it. He didn't want to change it, because Hutch was gone and his glaring absence should have left something changed. It didn't seem right to go on living when Hutch was dead.

_Hutch wouldn't like this. He wouldn't like it at all. _

In life, Hutch had always had such strong opinions on things—how they were, could and should be. He always had a plan; he always had things figured out. Even in death, he had it all figured out. He had left Starsky his apartment, the contents of his bank account, and a letter that Starsky hadn't yet been able to bring himself to read. He didn't want to for fear it would make him feel worse than he already did. The letter was the last thing Hutch had left behind, its contents the final thing he would ever say and Starsky planned to delay reading it for as long he could.

_Hutch wouldn't like that either. _

There was nock at the front door. Firm and unapologetic, it was followed by Cooper's voice. "Starsky," he boomed. "Come unlock the damn door."

Starsky was taken aback by the demand—and the concept of Cooper showing up uninvited only to insist entry to his apartment. Pulling himself up off the floor, he complied with the request—despite his annoyance, the hint of anger growing in his chest.

Who did Cooper think he was? Nothing about their rapport should have led him to believe such a thing was acceptable. Nothing about their past interactions would have indicated that Starsky would ever welcome Cooper into his home.

"Starsky," Cooper repeated impatiently. "Come on, come on, come on, open the—"

Thrusting the door open, Starsky frowned, his eyes narrowing with disdain.

Appraising him cheerfully, Cooper grinned.

"There he is," he said, his voice carrying a jovial note as he held a tinfoil wrapped cylinder in his hand—a burrito, judging by its look and smell. He was neither intimidated nor fearful of Starsky's standoffish body language or darkening facial expression as he pushed past him and entered the apartment.

"Whoa," he said, nodding in approval as he appraised the apartment. "Nice digs, man. Now I can see why you're late all the time. If I lived here, I don't think I'd ever leave. This is a beautiful place. This was Hutch's place, right? The infamous, terrific apartment he left you in his will."

"That's none of your business."

"None of my business?" Cooper laughed. "Shit, Starsky, it's not like it's a secret. It's common knowledge around Metro."

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"I tried to call you and you didn't answer. Well, that's not actually true. I guess you didn't feel like talking because you hung up on me instead. I assumed you did that because your chick was here. Where is Alice anyway?"

"Sweet Alice ain't my chick."

"Really? She spends five nights out of seven in your bed, doesn't she?"

Starsky's brows furrowed. It was true; Alice did spend more nights with him than she did away. How had Cooper known that? Unless he was spending his nights on a stakeout outside of Venice Place, keeping track of who went in and out, then he had no reason to be privy to such a thing.

"Have you been watching me?"

"Of course not," Cooper laughed. "Why would I need to do that? We're partners, buddies, right? If I wanted to know something I'd just ask."

Starsky wasn't convinced. While they may have been partners, they weren't buddies—or even friends. "What do you want?"

"Me?" Cooper asked, pointing the index finger of his free hand innocently at his chest. "Nothing. Dobey on the other hand…He wants to see you."

"Is he mad?"

"He's not happy…"

"Great."

"…He's not quite livid either. He's lingering in some kind of pissed off gray area. So, I would hurry if where you. Lucky for you, you've already showered." Cooper offered Starsky the burrito. "And I brought you lunch. Get dressed; you can eat on the way."

"What makes you think I like burritos?"

"What would make me think you didn't like them? Everybody likes burritos."

_Hutch didn't. _

Starsky felt what was left of his anger slip away. It was quickly replaced with a stinging sadness he couldn't ignore. Hutch didn't like a lot of things. Greasy junk food and cheap beer, being asked questions when he suddenly reappeared after disappearing for days on end. He never said good-bye before he left, but he always came back. Except now he wouldn't, because he couldn't, not this time.

Sometimes Starsky wondered—sometimes he just thought—that maybe there had been a grievous error, a dreadful mix-up between the time Hutch had disappeared and when his body was found. Maybe this all just a terrible mistake or a horrible nightmare from which he was destined to suddenly awake. Maybe Hutch hadn't died. Maybe, if he just closed his eyes long enough and kept them closed for just the right amount of time, then he could open them again, wake up from this nightmare and find Hutch had suddenly reappeared—just like he always had.

It was an impossible wish—deep-down, he knew that—fueled by grief and insurmountable pain. Hutch wouldn't like him thinking that way.

_He wouldn't like it at all._

But—showing up to shepherd him to an impromptu meeting with Dobey complete with a burrito and smile—Cooper, Hutch would like. Maybe not at first and maybe not a lot, but he would have appreciated what Cooper was trying to do.

And for that reason, in that moment, Starsky decided not to accept Cooper's offer. He decided to hate him instead. For showing up uninvited to his house, for trying to serve as a buffer between he and Dobey's wrath, for bringing him a burrito and demanding he answer his door. For masking his curiosity with a smile and trying a little too hard to disguise his concern. It wasn't genuine. It couldn't be. They didn't know each other; they were strangers; and Starsky didn't much care for strangers at moment, especially those who showed up uninvited to his home.

"Get the fuck out," Starsky growled. Clenching the burrito in the palm of his hand. The tinfoil crinkled beneath his fingers, tearing slightly under such force.

Cooper was confused. "I thought I was going to—"

"I said _get out_!"

Lifting his hand, Starsky aimed for Cooper as he threw the burrito forcefully. Cooper ducked just in time and the item soared in the hallway wall across from the apartment's front door. It hit the door of the neighboring apartment and erupted, exploding into soggy mess, splattering nearly everything in close proximity.

Starsky should have felt bad about vandalizing the shared hallway and the door to someone else's home. But he didn't. It was hard to feel bad about the mess considering the other apartment was vacant. It was difficult to feel remorse when his fury at Cooper was so strong.

"Man," Cooper said. "You really don't like burritos, do you?"

"I_ said_—!"

"I heard what you said," Cooper interrupted, his voice became firm as he finally lost his patience. "I don't think you heard what I said. The Captain wants to see you."

"So? Why do I care?"

"Why do you care?" Cooper shook his head in disgust. "Oh, I don't know, maybe because he's your superior officer and you're late _again_. Judging by the looks of you, you're hung over again too. He's not going to like that and neither do I."

"You don't get to judge me."

"Starsky, all of Metro is judging you," Cooper countered. "And you're giving them a hell of a lot to talk about."

Starsky couldn't deny such a glaring fact. He saw the way people looked at him; he heard their whispers and he struggled to ignore their curious stares.

"I don't owe you any explanations," he spat.

"That's where you're wrong, because your work attendance, your tardiness and your drinking all affect me."

"How?" Starsky scoffed. "We got nothing to do with each other."

"You wrong about that. We're supposed to be a team. I'm not your enemy; I'm your partner, something I know you aren't happy about."

"What the hell do you know about anything?"

"I know that you're wounded and there isn't anything anyone can do or say to help that because Hutch is gone."

"Don't you _dare _talk to me about him!"

"He's _gone_, Starsky, but you're still here, so what are you going do? Lay down and quit? Drink yourself to death? What the fuck are you doing, man? What the hell is going to become of you if you keep carrying like this?"

"That's none of your business."

"You are nothing like the Detective Starsky Captain Dobey told me about when he said he wanted to partner us together," Cooper said. "You couldn't be more different than the David Starsky I heard about before I was transferred to Bay City PD."

Scoffing, Cooper turned in place, setting his hands on his hips and his eyes on the burrito on the door across the hall.

"The Starsky I heard about loved being a cop and he was damn good at his job. He was known to be aggressive and slightly volatile, street smart and headstrong; he did anything to solve a case and get the job done. But since the day I met you, you haven't been any of those things." Cooper nodded at messy door. "Oh, you're aggressive, alright. But you're _not_ intimidating. You're volatile and headstrong in all the wrong ways. You drink too much; you spend the majority of your time alone or in the company of prostitute."

"Alice ain't— "

"She's not your girlfriend, so you say, but she spends plenty of nights in your bed. Then what does that make her, Starsky? Don't tell me you don't understand what it looks like. You're not stupid and neither am I. I don't know if you pay her but plenty of other guys do."

"I don't give a shit about— "

"You don't give a shit about a lot of things."

"What do you care? You don't know me."

"You're right about that. I don't know you because you won't let me. Although, that doesn't really matter." Cooper shrugged. "I've heard enough grandiose stories about you and I've seen enough of your current behavior to be disappointed."

Finally complying with Starsky's demand, Cooper left the apartment. He stopped on his way out, pausing in place just outside the doorway.

"Dobey still wants to see you," he added. "It isn't my problem if you decided not to show up." His hand clenching the doorknob, he looked at his partner beseechingly. "Think about it, Starsky. Think about who you are, where you're headed and where you want to be. You may have lost Hutch but you gained me. He was good at his job but I'm way better. Together, you and I, are going to make one hell of team. That is, if you live up to the hype."

As Cooper finally disappeared out his line of vision, Starsky closed his eyes, clenching and unclenching his fists at sides. He forced himself to take a series of deep inhales and exhales, his chest rising and falling despite his overwhelming fury and stinging ache in his heart.

_"Take a deep breath_," he could hear Hutch say._ "One right after another until you feel that anger finally start to fade. You want to go after him, prove his words wrong by kicking his ass. That's stupid, and doing something stupid isn't going to help anything now. Just let it go." _

Hutch's voice was so crisp and clear in Starsky's mind. His advice so apt even though Starsky was sure he hadn't actually heard him say it_. _He didn't need to, because he knew Hutch better than anyone else, better than himself, even. He didn't need to hear Hutch say anything in order to know the exact words he would say.

_"Whatcha gonna do, kiddo?" _Hutch whispered again.

Flinching at the moniker, Starsky refused to open his eyes. From the very first day they had met until the day he had disappeared Hutch had tortured him the nickname. At first it was annoying—Hutch knew damn well than he was younger than Starsky, making the term erroneous and invalid—eventually, over time, as their partnership and relationship grew, he came to like the nickname. It was predictable. Comforting. He didn't hate it, not anymore. But it seemed like such a foolish thing to admit now.

"I hate that nickname," Starsky whispered.

_"I love that nickname," _Hutch countered then laughed.

It was the laughter that put an end to the daydream. Haunting and familiar, it was difficult to hear. It prompted Starsky to open his tear-filled eyes. For a few fleeting seconds, he hoped this would be the awakening from the nightmare he longed for. That the conversation with Hutch had been real and not a figment of his imagination. That somehow—some way—Hutch hadn't died. That he would be standing in front of him now, his blue eyes shining with glee as he teased Starsky just like he always had.

But it couldn't be, and it wasn't.

Looking upon the empty apartment, Starsky did nothing to stop the tears streaming down his face. He was alone as he sank to his knees on the floor and sobbed.

_Hutch wouldn't like this. He wouldn't like it at all. _


	5. Chapter 5

**BAY CITY METRO **

**JULY 16, 1979**

"I want a new partner."

Dobey leaned back in his chair, a hint of humor glistening in his eyes as he looked Starsky up and down. "And I want my son, Cal, to get an A in algebra this year." He tiled his head and smirked. "It isn't going to happen."

Hanging his head in frustration, Starsky groaned.

"It's good to see you," Dobey said. "It's been a while. It's nice to know you've actually remembered you still have a job, responsibilities, people who expect to see your face for more than a split second once every two weeks."

"Don't get used to it." Starsky turned in place, intent on leaving his superior's office as quickly as he arrived.

"Don't you dare," Dobey warned, his voice deep, as he indicated at a chair in front of his desk. "Take a seat, Detective. We have a lot to talk about."

"I don't have anything to say."

"Then it's a good opportunity for you to listen. _Sit_," Dobey said firmly. "_Now_."

Starsky didn't have any other choice then to comply. Sinking into the indicated chair, he crossed his legs, hooking his ankle over his knee before uncrossing them and crossing his arms instead. He knew he looked like a petulant child and he felt worse. Finally being forced to endure a lecture that he knew had been coming for weeks. The next words from his mouth didn't help matters much—not that he could have controlled them.

"You're not my father," he said.

Bitter and impetuous, the statement was enough to raise Dobey's eyebrows. They stared at each other for a moment, Starsky overcome by embarrassment and wanting nothing to more than to disappear and Dobey thinking about whatever the statement had prompted him to consider.

"You're right about that," Dobey said eventually. "But that doesn't mean I don't have the right to care about what happens to you. You're my detective, Starsky. You're under my supervision, and, in a way, you're my responsibility. "

"So you're saying you only care about me because it's in your job description?" Starsky asked sharply.

"No. I'm saying I care because I care about you. How long have we known each other, David?"

"Starsky," Starsky corrected.

Once he reached adulthood, there were only three people in the world whom he had ever allowed to call him by his first name. His mother, his brother, and his current love interest—whoever they may be.

Hutch had never called him David, despite the opportunity. He preferred seemingly more masculine terms of endearment. Like everyone else, the term he had most utilized when referring to his partner had been Starsky's surname, followed closely by one of his own creation: "kiddo", and lastly the infrequent "babe". The latter was a term reserved for only the most tender of moments. Moments of intense passion or extreme pain. Starsky could count the number of occasions Hutch had called him David and babe on the fingers of both his hands. Starsky and Kiddo, however, were innumerable.

Leaning forward, Dobey planted his forearms on the desk. "Listen, Starsky," he said, his voice softening to an unbearable pitch. "I know what it's like to lose a partner."

Starsky's stomach churned. There wasn't an officer on the captain's roster that hadn't heard of Elmo Jackson—though not directly from Dobey himself. There were plenty of whispers. Morbid and morose, the story of Jackson had become somewhat of a cautionary tale amongst detectives. What could and would happen if partners lost track of each other. If one allowed the other to venture too far into enemy territory alone.

Back in the day, Dobey and Jackson had been working to bust a drug lord by the name of Stryker. Falling behind his partner, Dobey had been safe at home when Jackson had been killed. It took three days for them to find Jackson's body, strung up on hooks in a meat factory. His dangling corpse was a not-so-subtle warning, reparation for the mild inconvenience Stryker had suffered by a cop that dared get too close.

Years later, it was Starsky and Hutch who eventually arrested Stryker, and it was the city who was now demanding their own reparations from the man for his crimes, drug manufacturing and trafficking, the murder of Elmo Jackson and countless others.

Starsky knew the story just like Hutch had, he just wasn't certain why Dobey would be bringing it up now. Closing his eyes, he forced an exhale.

_"Is it obvious?" _Hutch's voice asked.

Startled by the question, Starsky opened his eyes and looked around the room. It was one thing to hear his deceased partner in the privacy of Venice Place—the home that was once Hutch's and now had become his own—but to hear it here? In Dobey's office, under his superior officer's evaluating gaze?

_It isn't that obvious,_ Starsky thought despite his worry.

_"Of course, it is,"_ Hutch countered. _"He lost a partner in a terrible way; he doesn't talk about it because it still hurts, but he's going to talk to you about it, because that's something that the two of you have in common now. He's trying to relate to you. He's trying to make you understand that how you feel now isn't going to last forever." _

"Starsky," Dobey said. "I know how you feel."

Starsky frowned, irritated that Hutch's disembodied voice had been right and furious that Dobey would dare make the comparison. Jackson wasn't Hutch. Though their deaths had been sudden and violent, their relationships with their respective partners couldn't have been more different. Jackson had been Dobey's partner, his best friend. Hutch had been Starsky's partner in everything.

"You have no idea how I feel," Starsky fumed.

"I understand what you're going through. I know what it's like to be forced to go on while knowing that your best friend is dead. Moving on professionally after Elmo was one of the most difficult things I've ever had to do. Accepting another partner isn't easy, especially after working with someone so long. You and Hutch had seven years together. That's a long time and it allowed you leeway in your rapport, time that lent to cohesiveness. You knew each other; you knew that you could trust and depend on one another, and now that's all gone. Hutch is gone and you're left alone, expected to be who you were with him alongside a stranger. I understand all of it, Starsky. Now are you still going to tell me that I don't know how any of it feels?"

"Yes, because you don't. It's not the same."

Starsky shook his head furiously. Dobey didn't understand; he couldn't. The comparison of Hutch and Jackson was miscalculated; the grief and pain their deaths had left behind couldn't have been more dissimilar. The equivalence of Dobey's comparison would have been more accurate had he likened Hutch's death to that of his wife. It was one that couldn't be made; Dobey couldn't possibly understand the depth of Starsky's loss, because his wife was still alive.

"You don't understand!" Starsky said, his voice shaking with rage.

_"__Calm down, kiddo,"_ Hutch's voice suddenly warned. _"Maybe it's you that doesn't understand. You're already in trouble but that doesn't mean you have to give into your anger and say too much."_

Starsky was too upset to heed the warning. "We lived together before he died! He left me his house, his banks accounts and all of _his stuff_, don't tell me you never thought about why."

"I didn't. I _don't_." Dobey's knowing expression contradicted his claim. "What a man does with whom on his own time is none of my business," he said. "What you and Hutchinson were doing with each other off the clock is none of my concern."

"I loved him," Starsky said. He had come too far to turn back now. If Dobey wanted to understand the way he claimed to, then Starsky would make sure he did. "I really, really loved him—"

"Stop." Dobey lifted a silencing hand. "Don't say anymore. You may not be on the clock, but I am. You're in my office, Detective. I can't ignore what you admit to me in here."

_"He's right,"_ Hutch's voice said. _"Listen to him, because he's right. You don't want to out yourself, not now. Maybe there would have been a point if I were still alive, but there's not because I'm dead. If administration finds out you prefer men over women, they'll do to you what they did to Colby. You'll lose your career and then you really will have nothing." _

"I seem to remember another partner you once had, John Colby," Dobey said. "There was time when you and he were close and then he became a guy who said the wrong thing to the wrong people and it put an end to his career. Do you want to end up like him?"

Starsky didn't answer. Without Hutch, he wasn't certain what he wanted, not anymore. Besides, he was already plenty like Colby it was just no one around him wanted to see it. In fact, Hutch had been like Colby too, but he was dead, so there was little point in drawing any attention to that detail now. Still a few people knew, even if they pretended not to. Hutch's family, Huggy, and Dobey—if he were being honest. The only person Starsky could think of who didn't know but had potential to was Cooper.

_He isn't going to know_, Starsky thought. _He never gets to know. _

_"That's because you successfully diverted his attention,"_ Hutch whispered in return, his voice sounding more confused than disappointed. _"Sweet Alice? Really, Starsk? Talk about an odd match. The only thing you and her have in common is missing me." _

"I don't want to partnered with Cooper," Starsky said, returning his attention to Dobey and the topic of conversation to the request—demand—that had brought him to his superior's office in the first place.

It was days after the burrito tossing incident and Starsky hadn't seen Cooper since, but he still didn't like how Cooper had spoken to him. He still didn't like a lot of things about that interaction. How it had somehow shifted something in his psyche, leaving him haunted by—but not angry about consistently hearing—Hutch's voice.

"I want a new partner," Starsky reiterated.

"I already refused your request," Dobey said.

"I can't work with him, Captain."

"You aren't working with him at all," Dobey countered. "Four months you guys have been partnered together and your stats are in the garbage. Outside of that fluke purse snatching thing, the two of you haven't solved a case. Of course, _you_ haven't worked any either, which is the source of the problem. Cooper is here every day, Starsky, waiting for you to show up, so the two of you can actually do something, contribute to your squad and protect the city as you were entrusted to do."

"I can't work with him. I won't."

"Why not?"

"Because…" Starsky began and then hesitated. He didn't want to say his reason out loud. Remaining silent for a moment, he almost expected Hutch to whisper the truth for only him to hear. But he didn't. It seemed that Starsky's active imagination was not really as predictable as it seemed.

"Because Cooper isn't Hutch," Dobey provided.

"He came to my house, Cap," Starsky said. Feeling a surge of anger, he looked at his superior officer imploring him to accept his position on the matter. "You should have heard the things he said to me. Talking to me about Hutch and how I was disappointment. I won't tolerate it. I won't stand for it and neither should you."

"Rough interaction, huh?" Leaning back in his chair, Dobey's expression turned thoughtful. "I seem to remember another rough interaction." He chuckled. "Introduction, really. Your first meeting with Hutch in an empty stairwell that left you demanding the very same thing from me then as you want today."

"That was different."

"It's the same," Dobey assured. "And as such, my answer remains the same today as it was back then. You want to keep your job, then that means you keep your assigned partner. If you decide to walk, then it isn't of my business who you spend your time with."

Xx

Leaving Dobey's office, Starsky walked purposefully to the parking garage.

Head down and expression firm, he wasn't in the mood to be stopped. It was something that the people around him seemed to take note of as they gave him wide berth, each every one of them seemingly as eager to avoid him as he was to get away from them. He walked to the parking garage in record time; it wasn't until he entered the stairwell that he slowed his pace, and when he came upon the spot where he and Hutch had had their infamous first meeting he stopped completely.

The stairwell was empty and he was alone, something he was equal parts thankful for and heartbroken by. Thankful because he didn't have an audience for the grief he could no longer contain, and heartbroken because when Hutch was alive, he had never had to worry about being alone.

_"Except for the times when you did,"_ Hutch's voice reminded.

"What times?" Starsky asked.

Without said audience he wasn't afraid to verbally respond to figments of his imagination. Not that he should have felt comfortable responding to it. He had a fleeting notion that he should have ignored it completely. It was quickly dismissed, ignored along with the subsequent thoughts which had followed the first.

Was he going crazy? Symptomatic of his desperation to believe Hutch wasn't dead, was he slowly going insane?

_"The times when I disappeared. When I left without any indication of where I was going or when I would be coming back." _

"That didn't happen that often. That's different than this."

_"Why?" _

Reaching for the handrail to steady himself, Starsky didn't answer. He couldn't bring himself to say what it seemed even his subconscious wanted him to admit. Hutch was gone—he knew that. What was the point of saying it aloud?

_"Saying it aloud is important, kiddo."_

"I don't want to," Starsky whispered.

_"Not saying it doesn't make it any less real and pining after a dead guy isn't doing you any favors." _

"Yeah, well, I'm having enough trouble coping with reality as it is."

Sighing, Starsky let go of the handrail and forced himself to move from where he had stopped. Every step was challenge, each seemingly trying to silently convince him to hesitate in place once more. It was hesitating he was afraid of now—especially when the soles of his tennis shoes came into contact with the very cement where his words had once prompted Hutch to pause all those years ago during their first introduction. Still, Starsky forced himself to continue; he had already recalled that memory there was no point in reliving it again. There were countless others he could recall in its place.

_"Do you ever think about it?"_ Hutch's voice suddenly asked.

"What?"

_"They found my body in Bay City, you know? All those other times that I left and you never knew where I went, do you think I was in Bay City those times, too?" _

Starsky shook his head. He didn't know; he didn't care to know. There was no point in analyzing the past, in theorizing about where Hutch had gone or who he was with, because he would never know.

_"They found me with a guy,"_ Hutch continued in spite of Starsky's determination. _"A stranger."_

"I don't care about that."

_"Yes, you do. Don't lie. You always were the jealous type. As possessive as a teenage girl over her coveted prom date. Coma boy is a stranger to you but was he a stranger to me? That's the question that haunts you more than any other, you know? Not why did I die or even who killed me, but why was I with another guy in the warehouse? What did the two of us have to do with each other? Did I meet him in the warehouse or had I been meeting him in secret before?" _

Starsky didn't answer. He couldn't, because he didn't know. 

Pushing through the door of the parking level in which the Torino was parked, he stared at the pavement in front of him, shoved his hand deep into his front jeans pocket and felt around for his keys. Looping his finger in the keyring, he pulled them out a little too forcefully and they flew from his hand, sliding across the ground until coming to a stop in front of the toes of a pair of wingtip dress shoes.

Eyes locking on the keys and then the shoes, Starsky hesitated in place, his gaze climbing slowly as he evaluated the figure standing paces in front of him. It wasn't until he looked at the man's face, his own contorting with slow recognition, that he felt a surge of annoyance and frowned.

"What do _you_ want?" he demanded.

His favorite resident FBI agent—or least favorite rather—Special Agent Bill Walters. "You dropped your keys," he said, stating the obvious as he so often did in the few scattered interactions Starsky had with him over the years.

Nothing about their interactions—or the man—was notable. Standing tall, Walters was just shy of six feet on a good day; he always appeared studious and put together, dressing in carefully matched suits and shined shoes. His voice was all upper-class, his tenor and tone carefully controlled in order to compose a voice he had first emulated behind the closed doors of his private school dorm room as a youth, no doubt. His brown eyes were often veiled as were his expressions; it was as though he had a thousand things he wanted to say if given the proper opportunity—perhaps a sudden reprieve from his duties as an upper-class agent of the FBI which demanded his silence and secrecy regarding things well above Starsky's assumed paygrade.

Walters wasn't fun to work with—this wasn't something Starsky knew from experience; it was information he had assumed from the instances when Walters had sprung into action appropriating less than a handful of investigations from Starsky and Hutch's caseload under the guise of federal jurisdiction claims.

He wondered what was important enough to bring Walters from the towering FBI building on Wilshire Boulevard to slums of Bay City Metro—Walter's disparaging comparison, not his own—today.

"I was waiting for you," Walters said, as though reading Starsky's mind. Bending down, he retrieved Starsky's keys and tossed them his way.

Catching them reflexively, Starsky held them tightly. "What do you mean?" he asked, regarding Walters suspiciously. "I'm not working any active cases. I don't have anything going on that you need to stick your nose into."

Walters forced a smile and for a second Starsky was sure he saw sadness in man's dark eyes. Then it was gone, hidden behind a veil of impassiveness as though it had never existed.

"Of course not," Walters said. "This visit wasn't dictated by professional requirement."

"What was it dictated by?"

"Professional courtesy."

"Oh, that's a bad joke," Starsky said. "Though I never have taken you for the comedic type. Didn't you hear me? I'm not workin' anything. I got nothing going on that would require your _courtesy_."

Inhaling deeply, Walters was uncharacteristically hesitant, seemingly dreading the very same words he had come to say. "I shouldn't be here," he whispered. "I shouldn't be telling you any of this."

"You haven't told me anything."

Walters shook his head dismissively. "Listen to me, please? I don't have much time."

"Then talk."

"I came to tell you that Hutchinson always so spoke highly of you; I think you should know that—I _want _you to know that."

"When did you and Hutch ever talk?"

"He was a great man; he was excellent at his position. He was born to do what he did, and what he did, he did very well. You, yourself, are proof of that. You don't know it, but you are."

"What are you _talking_ about?" Starsky asked.

"It isn't right, Starsky," Walters said emphatically. "What happened to Hutchinson wasn't right. They knew that but did it anyway."

"Who's they?"

"Even now, the decisions they've made, the details they've decided to hide and pretend don't exist, none of those are right either, but they're still going to do it, because they don't care."

The sparse admissions were confusing; they didn't make any sense. "If you don't start talking some fucking sense so help me—"

"The Hutchinson Homicide is no longer being investigated," Walters said. "As of this morning, the FBI ceased their investigations; the casefile has been closed and sealed."

"_What_?"

Starsky absorbed the information like a punch to the gut. He felt knocked off center, hopelessly out of breath. He couldn't think of anything else to ask. Walters was standing right in front of him, seemingly an open vault of need-to-know details and hushed information regarding Hutch's disappearance and death, why couldn't he think of any questions to ask?

_"Ask him what happened to me,"_ Hutch whispered, his voice rising above Starsky's paralytic discombobulation. _"If they're closing the casefile this soon, then they must know something, who killed me and at the very least a theory as to why."_

"Who did it?" Starsky demanded, pain and anger radiating through his chest.

"I can't tell you that." Taking a step back, Walters shook his head as reality seemed to dawn on him, the gravity of what he had said and the likelihood that it was already too much. "I shouldn't be here right now. Lords knows what they'll do to me if they find out I'm talking to you."

"Who?"

"I can't say any more than I already have."

"What the fuck, man?" Starsky asked. Aiming for demanding he only sounded panicked, his tone more pleading than threatening.

He took a step forward, towards Walters who took two steps back. He didn't want to know; he was sure he didn't, but it didn't stop the insistent questions from escaping his mouth.

"Who told you then? You came here to tell me, as a courtesy you came here, so please _tell me_. What happened to Hutch? Who killed my partner?"

Standing immobile, Walters surrendered his impassive veil and his eyes shined with a deep, glistening sadness that Starsky hadn't thought the man capable of.

"It doesn't matter now what happened," Walters whispered, his voice thick with emotion. "What's done is done and there isn't any going back. Hutchinson was a good man. He was intelligent, cooperative and collaborative. I will miss working with him. And I want you to know," he lowered his voice but spoke each word more firmly then the one before, "Starsky, I want _you _to know, that all around _me_, his absence is felt and he will continue to be missed. I'm sorry I can't say any more. There are so many other things that I would like to share, but maybe if you give my words careful consideration then you'll find that they were, in fact, enough."

"Enough for what?"

Walters didn't answer. Walking passed Starsky, he strode toward the door to the staircase.

Turning in place, Starsky felt helpless as he watched him go. "Bill?" he asked, Walter's footsteps echoing around them in the closed parking garage. "Enough for what?"

Pushing through the door, Walter's ignored the question as he disappeared on the staircase behind its gray mass.

Starsky stood in place for several long minutes, desperately trying calm the aching in his chest and control his frazzled thoughts enough to comprehend what had been said. It was a futile endeavor, useless and unachievable. There wasn't any way to understand something that had been presented in such an incomprehensible manner. Walters's words had been like pieces to a puzzle and Starsky wasn't even working from picture on the same box. And there was no feasible way to ease the aching of his heart—the endless sting of the loss awoken by having privileged details of Hutch's homicide case dangled so closely only to be dramatically ripped away.

Angry, heart-sick, and confused, he didn't know any more about what had happened to Hutch than before the conversation had taken place. He didn't understand the point of it, of Walters spontaneously showing up or anything he had said.


	6. Chapter 6

**JULY 16, 1979**

Starsky was agitated.

With music blaring out of the Torino's speakers, he left metro and drove without purpose. Frustrated by the outcome of his meeting with Dobey, he was disoriented by his conversation with Agent Walters and hopelessly lost without Hutch.

He eventually he found himself parking curbside in front of Venice Place. He hadn't intended to end up there; he hadn't planned his itinerary, plotted his turns, considered where each one could and would take him. He could have ended up anywhere driving the way he had, yet he still ended up in front of Hutch's home—his home. It was like something called him there, led him back, and now that he had arrived, he wanted nothing more than to exit the car and run up the staircase to find Hutch waiting for him.

He couldn't be, and he wasn't. But just because Hutch could no longer await his return, it didn't mean that no one else could.

Sitting in the front seat of Hutch's car, Alice was nursing a bottle of whiskey; she appeared to be well on her way to forgetting the details of the day or the night before rather—an actual injustice she had suffered at the hand of one of her clients or an unwelcome chain of memories, whatever had prompted the tears that had left her mascara ruined, smeared in raccoon-like circles around her dull, blue eyes.

Extracting her from the car, Starsky took several long pulls from the whiskey bottle as he shepherded her up the apartment stairs. She was inebriated and by the time he unlocked the apartment door and he was well on his way. Soon the bottle was empty, discarded on the floor and left forgotten as he and Alice turned their attention on each other.

Hands grasping at one another, they tore at each other's clothes. Stripping one another of their shirts and shoes, pants and undergarments before falling into ferocious mass on the bed. They didn't kiss; they _never_ kissed—at least not each other's lips. Their coupling wasn't due to passion it was a needed distraction. When they both were so desperate to feel anything other than the sadness consuming them. When they needed to lose themselves in one another, even if only for a short time.

Starsky wasn't sure how he measured up in comparison to Alice's other men. He didn't know if he was the best or the worst or even if he was ranked somewhere in-between. He knew he didn't care, because in comparison to Hutch, Alice couldn't be more different.

Though Alice was a woman and Hutch had been a man, the difference in gender hadn't done much to deter Starsky. Just because it had been awhile since he slept with a woman it didn't mean he didn't know what to do with her. He knew how to touch her body in the right ways, cupping and massaging her breasts, entering her with his fingers and eventually his length, swollen and pulsating, as he lost himself in the moment, each powerful thrust seemingly enough to propel her body right through the mattress. If he closed his eyes tight enough, if he was careful enough to not to hold her arms in his hands and if he ignored how her body felt, so foreign and small beneath his own, then sometimes he could pretend that she was somebody else. He could tell himself that it wasn't Alice's body he was in, but Hutch's instead.

It was always such a transient thought. Desolate and foolish. Nothing about Hutch and Alice felt the same; there was nothing—no amount of fantasizing or time he could keep his eyes closed as he forced himself to pretend—that would ever change that.

Hutch was solid, muscular, and tall, composed of lean arms and legs. He was the most startling, maddening combination of ferocious and affectionate. His movements were forceful and confident, yet delicate and reverent. He was a contradiction. Always so formidable and impregnable but in private moments so gentle, kindhearted and indulgent.

That was not to say that Alice wasn't an accommodating lover. Experienced and efficient, she knew how to touch him in order to get him to perform. She didn't shy away from the fact that he was accustomed to having sex with a man. It was knowledge she used to her benefit—and Starsky's own—as she dared touch him in places and do things that no other woman had before.

As far as sex went, their encounters were as enjoyable as one could expect. It did what it was meant to; it distracted and got them both off. Though the former benefit was always so fleeting, because Alice always screamed when she came. A high-pitched off-putting sound that only prompted Starsky to pull out of her and as far away from her as he possibly could. It was a sudden awakening from a prolonged daydream, shattering whatever respite he was obtaining from their physical closeness by reminding him what had brought them together in the first place.

Even though Hutch was dead, Starsky always felt as though sleeping with Alice was some kind of betrayal. It didn't feel like cheating exactly but it wasn't far away from it either. After all, they were in what was once Hutch's bed, surrounded by all of his earthly possessions and the walls of the apartment he once called home. It may have felt better had Starsky insisted he and Alice's relations only exist hidden away in a hotel room. A tiny, ragged place that would have belonged to no one and everyone at the same time. At least that way he wouldn't have to be surrounded by Hutch each time he entered Alice. At least that way, he wouldn't have to be accosted by his partner's memory every time he pulled out of her.

Rolling over, Starsky sprung naked from the bed. Satiated from their activities and drowsy from the whiskey, Alice's expression was relaxed as her eyes began to droop. She was asleep in mere seconds, her body shifting as she unconsciously moved to lay on her side, curling into a tight protective ball in the middle of the bed.

He felt bad watching her sleep—like a voyeur in his own apartment—and he felt worse knowing that he had allowed himself to take her again. She was drunk; she was upset and so was he, but somehow, now that it was all over and done with, it felt slightly like taking advantage, using an agonizing situation for his benefit. After all, she wasn't his girlfriend and he didn't pay her for her affection. He _never_ paid her. So, what was she getting out of their arrangement? What was he getting out of it himself?

_Hutch wouldn't like this; he wouldn't like it at all. _

_"You're right about that,"_ Hutch whispered, responding to Starsky's deprecating fear. _"But you're wrong about the reasons." _

Shaking his head, Starsky pushed the thought away as he gathered his boxer shorts from where they had been haphazardly discarded on the floor. Stepping into them, he pulled them on, his thumbs lingering momentarily on opposite hip-bones, stuck between the waistband his tanned skin. He didn't want to think about Hutch, not now. He didn't want to engage in imaginary conversations with his deceased partner, not with Alice sleeping so peacefully in their bed.

Leaving the bedroom alcove, he gathered a beer from the fridge and the watering can from the counter near the sink. Opening the beer, he drank greedily, finishing it and reaching for another before filling the watering can and moving to the greenhouse to carefully attend to Hutch's plants.

It was impossible not to think about Hutch in the greenhouse, surrounded by his vast collection of plants, blooming, flourishing, and alive despite the extended absence of their initial caregiver.

Hutch had loved the plants and though Starsky wasn't quite so fond, he looked after them carefully, ensuring each one had exactly what it needed to extend its life for as long as possible. He would do whatever he could, for as long as he could to ensure that the things Hutch had held close to his heart were preserved, honored, and taken care of. It was a pact he had made early on, obstinately repeating it to John Hutchinson the day the elder man had shown up in the apartment. Starsky hadn't known that day what he knew now, the truth about Hutch's ownership of the Venice Place. The seemingly infamous, terrific apartment he had left Starsky in his will.

It was knowledge that on that particular day had been shock but after further—sober—consideration hadn't been a surprise. After all, Hutch had expanded the greenhouse just last year, something Starsky knew had cost him an arm and a leg to do. He should have thought about it then; he should have put the pieces together and realized an expansion of that size and price was unlikely for someone who was merely renting the property to invest in. He should have asked Hutch about the apartment back then, when the project had been ongoing, the topic of ownership wide-open, but he hadn't.

The question simply hadn't occurred to him, but it consumed him now.

It didn't make sense for Hutch to hide such a thing; there didn't seem to be any reason not to disclose it, especially given the timing. If John Hutchinson was right—and Starsky knew he was because he had since seen the paperwork—then Hutch had purchased the apartment a mere month before expanding the greenhouse. They had been together then, on and off the job, standing side-by-side day-after-day both at work and bouncing between their respective apartments on their off-hours. Though he had able opportunity, Hutch hadn't said a single word about his newfound home ownership.

He hadn't said anything at all.

A part of Starsky felt betrayed and lied to. A more reasonable part of him wondered if it was a bit of an overreaction. Just because the information hadn't been disclosed, it didn't mean it was a lie; it didn't make it purposely hidden. Maybe it had just been overlooked, omitted at the time because of whatever else they were dealing with the time. Starsky couldn't explicitly recall what their careers were demanding from them during the month Hutch had signed the closing paperwork on Venice Place, though he did remember the time period had been especially tense—at least professionally.

Composed of one difficult investigation after another, their days and nights had been jam-packed and stress-filled. Memories of that time were sparse and unfocused, making it difficult to recall any one thing in particular. So, maybe Hutch hadn't meant to omit the detail of the apartment. Perhaps it was symptomatic of the period of time they were living through. And what did it matter now, anyway?

Starsky didn't want it to matter because he didn't want to think about it. He didn't like thinking about the discrepancies—the things he had known about Hutch while his partner was alive versus the things, he now knew after his death—though two things were particularly conspicuous.

He hadn't known about the apartment and he hadn't known Hutch's bank account was quite so large. Much larger than it should have been given his career choice and his living expenses. Both maddingly frugal and spontaneously extravagant, Starsky didn't have an exact figure of how much money Hutch had spent in any given month, but he had a general idea. As far as Hutch's income went—thanks to the salary schedule included in their employment contract—Starsky was painstakingly positive he knew exactly how much Hutch money had made, and the discrepancy between that number and the number in Hutch's savings account was glaring.

That wasn't to say that Hutch had been sitting on endless piles of money, because that wasn't the case. It was just more than he should have had. It was more than he should have been able to save in seven years as detective whose position was funded by the city he worked for. By his own calculations, Starsky would have had to save for at least fourteen years to match what Hutch had accomplished in seven. The money had become another discrepancy he couldn't make sense of. Though he couldn't fault Hutch for not disclosing it, he didn't understand where it could have come from.

Dancing on his tiptoes, Starsky extended his arm upward, struggling to place the spout of the watering can in the planter of a particularly high-hanging philodendron.

_"You know, a stool might help," _Hutch's voice whispered, sounding close to his ear. _"There's one in the corner, waiting around to be utilized in situations just like this." _

"I don't… need… a stool," Starsky grunted stubbornly.

_"Sure, you do." _

"No… I… don't."

Somehow extending his arm a tiny bit further, Starsky grinned as the spout finally came in contact with the soil. "There!" he said emphatically, tipping the water can for a few seconds before finally pulling it back. "Ha! You see?"

Looking around the empty greenhouse, his smile faded quickly. Of course, Hutch couldn't see, because he wasn't really there. Shoulders sinking dejectedly, he nearly dropped the watering can.

_"I don't know what you're so depressed about,"_ Hutch's voice whispered again, seemingly just to dispute Starsky's mood and postulation. _"What, with all this beautiful, green life around you."_

"You ask me why I'm depressed?" Starsky scoffed mournfully. "It just so happens that any world where you can die in a warehouse without me knowing by who or why is not a particularly terrific place to live."

_"__Okay… I get it, you're in pain. That's going to pass." _

"When? Jesus Christ, Hutch, _when_? It's been months and I don't feel any better today than I did the day I found you lying on the fucking ground!"

Abandoning the watering can on the ground, Starsky exchanged it for his half-empty beer, the contents of which was finished in mere seconds. Crushing the middle of the can, he dropped it on the floor to be collected later and thought about venturing to the refrigerator to get another. His whiskey buzz was starting to wear and the twin beers had done nothing to push him toward inebriation. Beer rarely did anymore, except when gulped in extreme excess, which he did more often than not these days. Yet another thing he didn't want to think about.

_"__You're not doing yourself any favors with that." _

Wounded and irritated, Starsky was caught off guard by Hutch's statement—one he obviously had subconsciously thought of and forced his imagination of Hutch to vocalize. It didn't seem right that he would challenge himself in such a way. It didn't seem right that he should be here, standing in the middle of Hutch's domesticated jungle while his partner was dead and buried in the Midwest.

If Hutch thought it was so easy to move on without him, then Starsky was more than willing to trade places with him. He would happily die if it meant Hutch could still be alive and then let him see how he coped with such a profound loss. Let him just see how he felt, carrying the things Starsky knew and being haunted by all the thing he didn't.

Hutch had died in warehouse where the cement was stained with his blood, the grisly image forever burned into Starsky's mind. He was haunted by the image, paralyzed by the fact that he hadn't been there when Hutch needed him the most.

Hutch had always been there when he needed him; it was one of the things he was best at. He had kept hope alive when it was about to slip through Starsky's fingertips. He was so good at keeping calm until the moment he finally couldn't, and he always came in the clutch. Always thought of the one thing they need to know, coming through at the very last second.

_He had always come through. No matter what. He didn't quit and he always won. _

If the situations would have been swapped, if it would have been Starsky in that warehouse instead of Hutch, Starsky was certain it wouldn't have ended the same way. Hutch would have come through; he would have saved him and then there would be no need for half-naked meltdowns, prompted by voices which were nothing more than figments of imagination, surrounded by a silent audience of plants, because Hutch would have saved him.

_He would have come through. _

Starsky hadn't come through. Hutch had needed him—more than ever, he had _needed _him—and he hadn't been there and now Hutch was gone.

Eyes brimming with tears, Starsky gazed upon the empty greenhouse. If he closed his eyes for long enough and then opened them again, what would he see? Would Hutch really be there? Then could he finally wake up from this God-forsaken dream?

_Of course, not. You're not dreaming, dummy. This isn't a dream, you know that. This is your worst nightmare. _

It was something he could neither deny or avoid anymore. He had failed Hutch—in so many ways. He had failed to heed the warning provided by the whispers of Elmo Jackson. He had lost track of Hutch. At the time, he hadn't realized Hutch had been lost; he hadn't even been aware there was an enemy Hutch had been forced to face alone. He didn't know if the hit had been random or calculated, who had planned and executed it or even why.

"I'm sorry, Hutch," Starsky whispered. Voice shaking it was the first time he had allowed himself to say the words aloud. "Oh, God, I am _so sorry_. I should have been there and I wasn't. I should have protected you; I should have found you before it was too late. You're dead because of me, because I wasn't there… oh, _Jesus_, in the end I wasn't there… I wasn't with you and now you're dead and… and I don't even know why."

He didn't know anything, because he had failed Hutch. As cop and friend, a partner and a lover. He had failed to protect him; he was dead and buried and Starsky didn't know why.

_I don't know anything at all._

Bottom lip quivering, he sucked it between his teeth in an effort to calm it and wiped his palms over his face in an overwhelmed manner. He didn't want to cry, not again; it didn't matter how many tears his grief demanded they never seemed to be enough. They never seemed to do anything, either. They didn't calm his pain, assuage his guilt, and they never were enough to make him feel whole. His sorrow, it seemed, was as useless as he felt.

_"__Okay," _Hutch said evenly. _"Okay… Now that you've finally said how you feel and got it out of your system, now what are you going to do?" _

"Do?"

_"__Yes, do. You still have a job to do. I'm talking about police business, kiddo." _

Starsky frowned. "Yeah," he said quietly, his thoughts turning to Dobey and Cooper. Cooper's disappointment he could ignore but Dobey's was harder to dismiss. "You and everybody else."

_"__You've had your time to cry and carry on, but it's time to start thinking like a cop." _

Starsky shook his head. He wouldn't; he couldn't. Not now. Now without Hutch.

_"__Oh, will you quit? Enough is enough already. I mean it, Starsk. I'm dead and you're still alive, and I get you're upset, but that doesn't mean you lay down and quit. Do you understand me?"_

Starsky's jaw burned as he swallowed thickly.

_"__You're always thinking about all the things you're doing that I wouldn't like when what you should be doing it thinking about what I would want you to do. I want you to stop acting like the world is fucking over, because it isn't. I want you to get your shit together and start doing the thing you're best at._ _You weren't there when I died and that's shitty, but I wasn't alone. Someone else was with me and he's still alive. Think about it and then tell me what you're going to do." _

Hutch's tone was firm as he demanded Starsky consider something he wanted to avoid thinking about. He hadn't been there when had been murdered, but Michael Bennett was. Hutch had died, but Bennett had lived.

"What does that have to do with anything?" Starsky asked. "What does Bennett have to do with you?"

Though he asked the questions, Starsky knew he wouldn't receive an answer. Hutch couldn't tell him anything he didn't already know.

_"__I can't tell you that,"_ Hutch said, echoing Starsky's belief. _"But that doesn't mean you can't find out."_

"How?" Starsky asked dumbly. When Hutch didn't answer, he imagined him rolling his eyes. "Okay… fine…I'm thinking about it."

_"__And I'm wishing you beginner's luck." _

"Ha, ha."

Starsky was quiet for a moment, his mind turning.

_"__You don't have me," _Hutch prompted. _"But what do you have?"_

"An apartment you never told me you owned," Starsky said flatly.

_"__Be serious." _

"I am serious. It's shitty you never told me the truth about the apartment, Hutch. It stinks to know you lied about something so stupid. I would have been happy for you, you know. We coulda celebrated, christened the place right."

_"__I thought you decided that I didn't lie. You decided I forgot to tell you; you decided I had omitted the detail instead." _

"Okay, fine, but where did your money come from? Who was giving it to you?"

_"__I can't tell you that either, but—again—that doesn't mean you can't find out. I may be gone, but you're still here. I may be dead, but you're still alive. You have a gun and badge; you're still a cop; and everything I ever had, I left to you. There might be clues there if you have the courage to find them. You don't know what happened to me now, but that doesn't mean you can't conduct some police business and find out." _

"I don't want to investigate you. I don't even know if I can."

_"__Who says?" _

"The FBI," Starsky countered. "They took your case, Hutch. They took it, closed it and sealed it. I don't work for them, how am I supposed negotiate that? How I am supposed to—?"

_"__You have everything you need. Don't act like you don't. Besides, you have something the FBI doesn't have." _

Starsky looked at the ground forlornly. _I used to, but I don't anymore._

_"__You're still a cop," _Hutch repeated, his voice becoming impatient, insistent. _"You have a partner, albeit one that you don't particularly like at the moment but he is yours. You have my apartment, access to my bank account, any personal records I might have kept. I left everything to you. All you have to do is think about it, just like Cooper said."_

"He wasn't talking about that," Starsky disagreed.

_"__Are you sure? Or do you not want him to be talking about this or my death because he isn't me? You're not alone in this, Dobey made sure of that. You have Cooper, whether you want him or not, and you have something that the FBI doesn't know that you have. An unlikely friend by the name of Special Agent Bill Walters. He came to talk to you today because it was important. He risked himself to do that and you're not even going to think about what he said or why?" _

"He didn't tell me anything, not really." Starsky frowned. He didn't want to think any of this. What was the point? Hutch was gone and he was never coming back.

_"__Yes, he did. You know he did. Think about it." _

"Starsky?" Sweet Alice suddenly drawled.

Slightly scandalized and taken aback, Starsky turned in place to find her lingering in the doorway. Her hair was disheveled, her skin pale beneath Hutch's orange robe. It was her eyes that bothered him the most. Under-eyes still smudged with the remnants of black mascara, her eyes were tired and bloodshot and glistening with tears as she assessed him woefully. She was going to have to clean herself up before she went to work tonight. Take a shower, wash her face, clean the evidence of Starsky's body off her own and drink a little more, just enough to take off the edge. Just enough to mellow her out enough to forget what had happened to a man she barely knew but still so violently mourned.

_Hutch wouldn't like that. He wouldn't like it at all. _

Absently, Starsky wondered how much money Alice made doing what she did; it couldn't have been much. He wondered where she lived; it couldn't be great considering her appearance and penchant for drinking. He couldn't help her with her addiction to alcohol any more than he could cope or own up to his own, but he did want to help her. Maybe he should start paying her after all. Take some of the burden off of her shoulders, allowing her to see just a minimum number of clients. Just enough to make ends meet.

The thought process was the beginning of a soapy scene he wanted no part of. Alice wasn't his girlfriend and she would never be, and besides she didn't want money from him. She wasn't expecting anything but a roll in the sheets and place to crash when she didn't feel like she could face the world. He was already providing both.

"Who you talkin' to, baby?" Alice asked.

Starsky flinched at the nickname, a bothersome development of late. They were going to have to talk about it soon; it was conversation he wasn't eager to have and wouldn't embark on today.

"Uh… nobody," he said.

Tearing his attention away from the anguish etched in Alice's face, Starsky looked around the empty greenhouse, a deep sadness settling in his chest as, once again, he found he was alone. He had always been alone. He reminded himself he knew that, but speaking to Hutch for such an extended period of time, it had been easy to forget. It was yet another thing Hutch wouldn't like or approve of.

He wouldn't like Starsky talking to himself, engaging in such animated conversations with an imaginary voice. He wouldn't want him to pretend he was still alive—though he would never tolerate Starsky letting him go.

"I'm not talking to anybody," Starsky said firmly, looking at Alice once more.

"It's okay," she said. "Really, it is. Sometimes I like to talk to Hutch, too."

"I wasn't talkin' to him," Starsky lied, not knowing why he wanted to.

As far as voyeurs to private one-sided conversations went, she was probably the safest. There was no telling how anyone else would react to such a thing. What someone like Dobey or Huggy or even Cooper would think. No, that wasn't true. He knew what they would think, because he was already thinking it himself.

_Hutch may be dead, but I'm the one going fucking crazy. _


	7. Chapter 7

** BAY CITY GENERAL HOSPITAL**

**JULY 20, 1979**

Michael stared absently.

His blue eyes were dull and glossed over, both somehow seeing too little and too much of the detail of the lines of cards his mother had laid across the table connected to his bedside.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, perched over the small, plastic table, his mother observed him expectantly. "Michael, watch," she prompted, pointing her index finger at her chest. "Watch, me and do what I do, okay?"

Extending her hand, she overturned one of the cards revealing a cartoon drawing of an item he couldn't identify. He should have been able to—he knew that; something deep inside of him screamed that he should have had at least some recognition of the picture before him. Surely, he had known what it was at one time—if not recently, then before.

She indicated at the card. "See this?" she asked. "This is a blue car. If you want to be specific, it's a Volkswagen Beetle from the looks of it." She grinned. "And, of course, you do, because we all know how you love your cars."

Michael blinked. Had he ever liked cars? He couldn't recall.

"Now, we're going to try to find the card that matches this one," she continued, her finger resting on the card reflecting the car as she indicated at the remaining downturned cards. "Then, we're going to turn them face down again and try to remember where they are. Michael, do you remember why the doctor said it was important to play this game?"

He didn't. He didn't remember seeing a doctor, waking up that morning, or even how his mother had suckered him into such a childish game. He hadn't had a choice, of course, because he was at the mercy of those around him.

"This is a memory game," she explained.

She often spoke to him like this, announcing each of her actions, detailing how and why she was completing each in an effort to spark something inside of his brain, for him to either recall old memories of create new ones.

"It supposed to challenge you cognitively, help retrain what the doctor called your visual memory, so that you can find the difference and similarities between objects."

Though Michael didn't remember his mother explaining the game—seeing or playing it—before, he was certain she had. This wasn't the first time she had uttered the simplistic directions and it wouldn't be the last.

His body was slowly beginning to heal; he was able to sit up for extended periods of time and he was almost able to stand on his own, thanks to his rigorous—sometimes torturous and seemingly endless—physical therapy regimen. He was meeting each physical milestone his doctors had put upon him; it was his cognitive recovery that had begun to lag behind. He still experienced a great deal of pain and was provided a seemingly endless supply of drugs, which intensified his confusion and fatigue.

The bandages around his face had finally been removed to make room for the residual swelling from his last surgery. His cheeks felt tight, his skin pulled taut by the swelling and bruising, the worst of which was reflected in the space between forehead and ears. His face was marred with dark, angry marks which his doctors advised his parents would begin to fade with time. He was groggy; his head hurt; and he was in no mood to tolerate games.

Extending his left hand, he pushed ineptly at the cards until a few fluttered to the floor. It wasn't much in the way of protest, but it was enough.

"Okay, okay," his mother soothed. Bending down, she crouched on the floor and slowly collected the discarded cards. "I understand, you've had enough games for today." She looked up at him. "You're frustrated, I can see it in your eyes…" Pausing, her blue eyes locked on his as she considered him thoughtfully.

As a few moments passed, Michael became increasingly uncomfortable beneath her stare. He didn't know why such a thing would bother him, but it did.

"There's something different about your eyes," his mother whispered. The words were so soft, it was as though she was uttering something she never meant to say aloud. "They're more opaque than they used to be. Haunted... glazed."

Inhaling deeply, she shook her head, seemingly to dismiss whatever bothersome thing her words had led her to consider. Standing, she placed the cards back on the table and her hands on both her hips.

"My goodness, would you listen to me?" she sighed. "What difference does it make? Blue eyes are blue eyes. What am I expecting you to look exactly the same, considering all that's happened? Brain injury, broken bones, swollen face and all?"

Shaking her head, she scoffed, seemingly disgusted by her own words.

Michael smiled, the tiniest upturn of his lips. He liked listening to her. It didn't matter the topic or tone, there was always something so comforting about her voice. He liked seeing her. Her presence was gentler, more palliative than that of his father. She spoke to him more too.

Though he didn't remember most of what she said, he remembered how she made him feel, less like a useless fixture of the room and more like an actual person. He was grateful for her, because without her faithful presence day-after-day he probably would have given up on himself.

Without her, he probably would have been forgotten completely.

"The doctors warned us about expectations, you know?" his mother said. "They said we shouldn't presume what tomorrow will bring. They said to take each day and appreciate it for what it is. Usually I'm so good at that. There is just something about today that feels heavier than the rest."

Listening to her, Michael couldn't disagree. There were so many things about this day, the ones which had come before and the ones which would come after that had felt laden, encumbered by the things he couldn't seem to remember—about before or now. The only steadfast thoughts he experienced were in his dreams. He knew so many things in his dreams, but upon waking that knowledge faded quickly, becoming fragmented, shattered and splintered by the strength of his confusion.

He couldn't remember who he was or how he had come to be here. He couldn't remember who he had been or why anything had happened how it had. He spent his days surrounded by his father or his mother—but rarely both at the same time—two people who he felt a fierce affinity for but had no recollection of how or when those feelings had been first established and allowed to grow into affection.

Had he always felt this way toward his parents? Or had these feelings developed more recently?

Were they merely the outcome of their current steadfast love, support? Or had they always been there? Had these people taken care of him from birth, keeping him safe and protected, allowing him to learn and grow into adulthood, only to be forced to take care of him once more?

He didn't know.

Just like he didn't know why his parents rarely sat at his bedside together anymore. He had been told. Surely, he had. Still, he couldn't remember what had been said, what explanation had been given or how he had felt upon hearing it. He didn't remember a lot of things. His name or that of his father or mother.

Brows furrowing in concentration, Michael stared at his mother, wondering what her name was. Not the title she so often referred to herself as—the repeated descriptor which declared their relation for his sole benefit—but her given name. Try as he may, he never could seem to remember it—whatever it was—and something about that didn't seem right. Although that wasn't necessarily a point of concern, because a little something about everything felt wrong.

"Steven is coming to visit you." She smiled, the wrinkles lining her eyes becoming more pronounced. "Your brother was finally approved for his Liberty Pass. He will be here for nearly a month, so he will have lots of time to spend with you. It's the first time in three years the two of you have been together, won't that be nice?"

Michael didn't know if his brother's impending visit was something to look forward to or dread. He didn't know if he should be happy or sad, pleased or intimidated by the news. His mother was right, he didn't remember his brother, and, worse, he couldn't help but feel that he didn't have a brother or that maybe—just maybe—he never had one.

"He's stationed overseas now, that's something you probably don't remember. Your brother's name is Steven and he's nearly three years older than you. He's been so worried about you. He's anxious to see you. To talk to you."

Michael snorted; it was an unintended joke he had no trouble understanding.

Seemingly pleased with his properly timed response, his mother's smile grew.

"I said talk to you, not with you," she clarified as though they were sharing an inside joke. In a way they were; though nothing about his lingering aphasia—his continued inability to express himself verbally with speech or understand or process everything that was said to him—was a laughing matter, it was nice to find humor in such a frightening and frustrating situation, as fleeting and trivial as it was.

"Maybe it'll be a good opportunity for you to listen," she said affectionately. "Lord knows you've never been any good at that. You used to talk circles around your father. He used to get so frustrated; you were always so stubborn; certain things were going to be exactly the way you wanted them to be. You were going do what you wanted, no matter the consequence. Even if was something you were doing wrong or something that was going cause trouble for you, you didn't care."

She paused, smoothing her fingertip over the worn back of one of the cards in front of him as she focused her gaze on the wall.

"A police officer died," she whispered softly. "He died and you lived, and I wish I knew what happened. If you did something to become so mixed up in this situation or if someone did something to force you to become a part of it. The FBI told your father and me that they think that that police officer died so that you could live. They believed he was protecting you, but they wouldn't tell us from what. I wish you could tell me what happened. I wish you could tell me anything, really. I know that's a lot to ask; I know I'm expecting too much, but we used to talk so much, Michael, and now you can't speak at all."

Inhaling a shaking breath, she held it, then expelled it and looked at him once more. There were tears in eyes as she forced a smile.

She looked sad. So downtrodden, heartbroken and morose that Michael wanted to apologize, if only he could remember what he had done wrong. Watching her mutely, he remained unable to do either.

"Oh, listen to me carrying on like an old woman," she said, wiping at her tears. "Enough gloomy thoughts for today. I'm sorry; I don't mean to be so serious and bleak. I'm tired today, that's all, and that what has led me to overanalyze your eyes and miss your voice. I wish you could speak, my darling. Wouldn't that be wonderful? Just for you say one tiny word. It wouldn't matter what it was, even if were one of the four letter ones you always seemed so fond of."

_Darling_.

Michael closed his eyes, overcome by a sliver of recognition. It was a word he knew; an endearment he remembered—not from now but before. When his life hadn't been limited to hospital bed.

_Darling._

His mother had always called him darling. Starting when he was too small to remember or understand, it was an affectionate term that had lingered into his adulthood. He was sure she had used the name before while he was lying here, unable to speak or move, paralyzed by his still-healing body in a bed. Surely, she had. However, this time was the first time he had understood and recalled its importance. This was the first time he had felt something about his current predicament was right.

_Darling._

It was such a tiny thing, a miniscule recollection in comparison to all the things he didn't remember and couldn't comprehend he didn't know. He didn't recall having a brother; he didn't know his mother's name, but she had called him darling the entirety of his life, something he knew because he had remembered. It was heartening and encouraging, gratifying and comforting to know that with all the things he didn't recall there was one he finally did.

_Darling. _

The recollection wasn't a lot, but at least was finally something.


	8. Chapter 8

**THE PITS**

**JULY 23, 1979 **

Lingering just past the hallway leading to the upstairs apartment and the backdoor, his body slightly obscured by the shadows, Starsky cast his gaze upon the room.

The Pits was busy for a Monday night. The day-drinkers and five o'clock crowd had merged, composing a mob he had once been familiar with. First, when Hutch was still alive and they spent a fair amount of their off—and on—hours amongst the working crowd. Then, immediately following Hutch's death, when Starsky had spent the majority of his late mornings and afternoons alongside the handful of day drinkers until the night Huggy finally cut him off and kicked him out. The action was seemingly inspired by the hope Starsky would somehow miraculously stop drinking if he was refused access to familiar faces of his regular bar.

It hadn't worked, of course. Starsky had found other places to spend his time where the proprietors weren't so judgmental. Places where he could lose himself in the stiffness of the drinks and become yet another sad face amongst an unfamiliar crowd. Branching out to other, less desirable establishments had been good and bad. Good because nobody in them seemed to care about him, how much he drank or what kind of trouble he got into, and bad for the same reason.

This was the first day he had ventured inside the Pits since he had been banned by his oldest friend. He hadn't come because he wanted to, rather Hutch's voice had stated it was as good of a place as any to start to the "investigation" he couldn't seem to shut up about.

Hutch's voice had become insistent; it was difficult to ignore and impossible to forget the things he said.

Throughout listening and conversing with his partner's disembodied voice, Starsky couldn't help paying heed to another. Quiet and sad, it was his own and it whispered the truth about what he was doing and why. He wasn't really hearing Hutch; he was imagining him—a fact that was so easy to ignore and forget. He had to talk to Hutch because he couldn't talk to anyone else; it was a crutch that was becoming more and more required each day.

Entering the Pits, anticipating a conversation he didn't want to have and questions he didn't want to ask and was dreading the answers to, Starsky wanted to talk to Hutch more than ever.

It was difficult to not such a thing here, because they had spent a lot of time at the Pits over the years. He couldn't count how many nights they had spent beneath the dim lights, drinking and playing pool, commiserating or celebrating. It was the first place they had gone when they finally started getting along. The last public place they had been together before Hutch was killed. Starsky couldn't bear to think about the latter so he focused on the former instead.

God, he and Hutch had hated each other so much at first.

Tethered together by a partnership Starsky didn't want, they had fought bitterly and often, each investigation they embarked upon becoming a brutal battle of opinions and wills. Everything Starsky had said Hutch declared wrong, but that was fine enough because everything Hutch did Starsky found fault in. During their first year together, they seemed more like swore enemies than partners, their respective actions counterproductive to one another. Things and been so bad between them that it didn't seem likely they would ever improve. Starsky's first visit to Dobey's office to request a new partner became one of many.

Then, suddenly, things began to change.

As bad as things had been for Starsky professionally, his personal life was proving to be infinitely worse. After the dissolution of their partnership, things with Colby quickly became complicated. Keeping their relationship hidden after Colby had been so publicly humiliated and damaged was difficult to say the least. They had to be careful and it led to all sorts of problems, jealousy, arguments and hurt feelings that finally caught up to them, eroding their love and relationship, demolishing it a little each day. That particular day, Colby had finally had enough; he had summoned enough anger to walk away from Starsky and towards a different future.

Starsky had come to the Pits to tame his own anger and soothe away the pain of his broken heart. He wished he had someone to talk to but his relationship with Colby had never been on the up-and-up. Nobody knew they had been together, just as nobody knew they had broken up.

He had sat alone in his usual booth as Huggy gave him wide berth and served him beer after beer. He had lost count of how many he had when he rested this head in hands and groaned. It was the creaking of the leather seat opposite of his own that prompted him to finally uncover his eyes. It was Hutch who was suddenly sitting across from him.

_"__Hey,"_ Hutch had said, his voice surprisingly soft, his expression uncharacteristically sympathetic. _"How you doing?" _

_"__What are you doing here?" _

_"__I came to give you a ride home." _

_"__I'm not ready to leave," Starsky_ scoffed. _"You're gonna be waiting awhile." _

Hutch shrugged. _"That's okay,"_ he agreed a little too easily. _"I'll stick around until you're ready."_

Brows furrowing, Starsky's surprise ebbed as his annoyance sunk in. Why did Hutch come? Why would he want to? They weren't friends.

_"__I'm not riding in your piece of shit car,"_ he said abruptly.

Hutch laughed. His reaction was notable; it was the first occasion he had reacted to Starsky's criticism of his haggard vehicle with humor.

_"__Good, because I didn't bring it. Of course, that means that I will be procuring the keys to yours at some point." _

_"__You don't have to be here, you know. I'm not even sure why you're here anyway. Did Huggy call you?" _

Ignoring the question, Hutch asked his own. _"How many is it gonna to take?" _He nodded at Starsky's near empty glass.

_"__What?"_

_"__How many beers do you think it's going to take for you feel better?"_

_"__I don't know. Who says I'm here because I want to feel better?" _

_"__Nobody drinks alone when they're feeling good." _

_"__Oh, what do you know,"_ Starsky scoffed.

_"__I know you came here because you're hurting,"_ Hutch said. _"I know there isn't anything anyone can say or do to change that, but I also know that whatever your feeling now will get better, I promise you that." _

_"__Doubt it." _Starsky drank what was left of his beer. _"And the day I start asking you to keep promises to me is going to be a cold one in hell and that I promise you."_

Hutch smiled—an oddly comforting sight given his abrupt arrival. His face was practically beaming; his teeth were impossibly white, offset by the mild pinkness of his lips. Maybe it was the alcohol that was making Starsky notice these things; maybe it was his heartache, or maybe it was because he had sat alone, drinking himself senseless for the last two hours all-the-while desperately hoping and waiting for Colby to finally come find him and bring him home.

Colby never showed because he had left and his parting words didn't indicate he was ever coming back, but Hutch had come. He had come even though Starsky never would have asked him to. Maybe was why, sitting across from him, his demeanor uncharacteristically warm, it finally occurred to Starsky how handsome of a man Hutch really was.

_"__Come on,"_ Hutch said. _"Do you actually think you are the first guy, in the history of the whole world, who has been dumped?"_

_"__What?" _

Despite his inebriation, Starsky was dumbfounded. How had Hutch known about Colby? He shouldn't have known. He didn't want him to know.

_"__You know,"_ Hutch said, _"just because Colby left that doesn't mean he doesn't love you. Maybe he loved you too much and that's why he had to let you go."_

Staring at Hutch, Starsky didn't know what to say. He didn't know if he should be scandalized and afraid or comforted and relieved because at least one other person knew the truth. Stuck between dismissing or denying the claims, he found himself confirming them instead.

_"__You were we're right," _he whispered sadly, his voice slurred. _"What you said to me the day we met was true. Me and Colby we aren't the same. We didn't make it."_

_"__I didn't want to be right about that."_

_"__But you were,"_ Starsky said. _"And that should make you extremely happy." _

Making eye contact with Huggy, Starsky indicated for another beer. It wasn't until he had come and gone, taking the empty glass and replacing it with a foaming new one that either man spoke again.

_"__Seeing you miserable doesn't make me happy," _Hutch said. _"It stinks that you think that. God, sometimes I wonder what you must think of me."_

_"__I think you're an ass,"_ Starsky said. _"That's no big mystery; I've told you before. And you think I'm too aggressive and stupid." _

_"__I never said you were stupid."_

_"__You said I was too aggressive."_

_"__You said I was arrogant."_

_"__You are arrogant!" _

_"__And you're aggressive!"_ Taking a deep breath, Hutch looked upon the room. _"I don't want to fight with you. I didn't come here to argue with you. I am so sick of arguing with you. It's exhausting."_ He looked at Starsky. _"Aren't you exhausted?"_

_Yes. "No."_

Hutch rolled his eyes. _"Now, you're just being difficult for the sake of being difficult." _

_"__And you're being annoying because that what you do. You were right about me and Colby, I already told you that. You don't have to stick my nose in it and rub it in."_

Hutch looked surprised. _"I'm not trying to rub it in. I'm not trying to make you feel bad about anything." _

_"__You're doin' a shit job. Jesus, man, why are you even here? We ain't friends. We don't hang out or see each other outside of work and then you just happen to show up, tonight of all nights, just to let me know you were right about somebody I happen to care a lot about."_

_"__You loved him."_

_"__Of course, I loved him,"_ Starsky fumed. _"Don't you understand what that's like? To have the person who you care about more than anyone else in the world suddenly change their mind about you? And now that you've finally figured the truth about me and Colby and got me to admit it, I suppose you'll be running back to Dobey like the narc you are." _

_"__I'm not going to tell Dobey or anyone else. I don't give a shit who you're in bed with. Whether you have relationships with men or women is none of my business and it shouldn't be anyone else's. If you want to hate me because your boyfriend fucked up and wreck your plans, fine. I don't really care if you like me or not, but don't lie to yourself."_

_"__Who says I'm lying?"_

_"__I do,"_ Hutch countered. _"I knew it before the day I met you and I know it now. I knew you and Colby weren't going to make it because I knew you were a stand-up guy and I knew what Colby did to get fired. And, Starsky, let me you tell you, he is damn lucky that's all that happened. He solicited sex from the wrong person; it's a mistake that cost him and you by association. I don't know how or why you would want to forgive him for that or even if that was something you were okay with, but believe me when I tell you it was for the best. Colby was dishonest, chaotic and stupid; he's not the kind of guy you want trust, and you certainly don't want him watching your back on the street." _

_"__And you are?"_ Starsky demanded.

_"__Yes,"_ Hutch said emphatically. _"And, Starsky, so are you. That is the difference between you and Colby. That will always be the difference between you and him." _

Taken back by Hutch's assessment, Starsky had run out of things to say, so he quietly drank his beer instead.

_"__It's a mistake to love people,"_ Hutch said softly, adding the comment like an afterthought he expected to go unheard. _"It always makes you so damn blind to their secrets and faults."_

Just as he had been then, today Starsky was grateful for the bar crowd; back then it allowed their conversation to go unheard by unfriendly ears, and today it allowed him to enter unseen by Huggy or either of the girls working behind the counter.

Moving directly toward the secluded booth in the back, he made eye contact with the sole person who was already occupying it. Snapping his fingers and jetting thumb at the packed bar behind him, he had firmly indicated for the guy to get lost. The guy— a day-drinker by the looks of him— stared at him momentarily, his eyes owlish and bloodshot, before mumbling something into his beer and slowly complying.

Sliding into the back corner of the booth, Starsky set his attention on the crowd around him and waited to be noticed. It took longer than he expected, but eventually Huggy did notice him. Starsky waved when he did, a sardonic motion that only served to intensify Huggy's frown.

_Come talk to me you asshole_, he thought bitterly. _It's least the you could do after everything else. _

_"__Play nice,"_ Hutch's voice immediately warned. _"Don't alienate the people you need." _

_I don't need him._

_"__Think again, kiddo. You wouldn't be here if you didn't."_

"Man," Huggy said as he slid into the opposite side of the booth. "I thought I told you not to come 'round here no more."

"You did."

"So, why you here, then? Did you finally decided to come pony up the money you owe me?"

Starsky snorted.

"I don't see anything funny about that," Huggy said. "Eight hundred dollars' worth of damages is what your little tantrum cost me and that don't even cover what I had to pay to fix the jukebox and the pinball machine."

"Couldn't have been that bad, looks like you already had them both fixed."

"It _was _bad."

_"__He's not wrong about that,"_ Hutch said flatly.

"That whole night was bad," Huggy continued. "Of course, I'm sure you don't remember that part, seeing as you were so drunk-off your damn ass that you decided picking on guy who happened to glance at you the wrong way was a good idea. That dude didn't have a problem with you, that is until your fist gave him one."

_"__You need to apologize,"_ Hutch said. _"You need to own up to that night and quit being so pissed off about something you caused. Huggy didn't kick you out of here because he had a problem enabling your drinking. He kicked you because he had problem with the behavior that came with it."_

"That poor dude ain't a cop like you," Huggy said. "He had to sit in the poke that night with a broken jaw. You were the one who started the fight and you were allowed to go home."

"Yeah, well, maybe you shoulda pressed charges against me, too," Starsky said, feeling slightly ashamed.

"What makes you think I didn't intend to. You can thank your partner for saving your ass that night."

_"__I wasn't there,"_ Hutch protested.

"Cooper's the one who showed up; man, he came out of nowhere, drug you swinging and swearing out of here before the uniform PO showed. He saved your ass that night, but I'm guessing you don't remember that either."

Starsky shook his head. He didn't. "Did you call him?"

"No."

"He just came?" Starsky asked skeptically.

"Maybe you called him."

Starsky shook his head. _No. No way I would have done that. _

_"Are you sure?" _Hutch countered, highlighting Starsky's small sliver of doubt. _"Are you absolutely sure you didn't call him thinking he was me?" _

_Yes. No. I don't know. _

Why would he have done that? If he was as drunk as he knew he had been, then how had he differentiated between the two phone numbers? If had been missing Hutch, he would have called Venice Place, the phone would have rung endlessly without answer. He wouldn't have called Cooper. He didn't even know Cooper's phone number; he had never bother to commit it to memory.

_"__I don't like that you can't remember,"_ Hutch said.

_"__I don't like it either,"_ Starsky said. Lost in thought, his audible response slipped out before he could stop it.

The strangeness of it went unnoticed by Huggy, however, who took it as admission of something else. "Do you think the rest of us do?" he asked. "Watchin' you lately has been about as enjoyable as watching a bus collide with a brick wall. There ain't nothing I can say or do to help or stop you, because you won't let me do anything but watch. If you think I don't miss seeing your mug around here then you're wrong. If you think the rest of us don't have Hutch in our hearts then you wrong about that too. You ain't only one who lost him, Starsky. You just happen to be the one who loved him the most."

"I know," Starsky conceded softly.

Pressing his palms against the top of the table, he forced himself to look Huggy in the eye. He was surprised by what he saw. He had expected disappointment and harsh, silent accusation; he found sad understanding and empathy instead.

"Look, I know," Starsky repeated a little louder. "I'm sorry, okay. Listen, give me a bill for the damages and I'll bring by a check."

"Man, I don't want your money." Huggy grinned, seemingly satisfied. "Like you got any, anyway. Word on the street is you ain't a cop anymore, that you spend the majority of the time in bed with a lady of the night."

_"__Word on the street, kiddo,"_ Hutch prompted. _"Who gives a shit about what they're saying about you. Ask him what they're saying about me."_

"That's why I'm here," Starsky said. "I need some information, Hug."

Huggy turned his attention to the bar. "Man, you know I don't care about who you got in your bed," he deflected. "And I don't have no qualms with Sweet Alice's choice in profession."

"Qualms, huh?" Starsky grinned. "Neat word. How about another?"

"'Bout what? I ain't heard nothing else about you."

"Not about me."

"Who then?"

"Hutch."

Mouth agape, Huggy's gaze snapped back to Starsky. "What do you mean word on Hutch? Starsky, you know them streets almost as well I do. Ain't nobody spending any time concerning themselves with somebody who's already dead."

_Dead. _

Starsky grimaced, stung by the word. It was way harder to hear than he anticipated.

_Hutch is dead. _

_"__You already knew that,"_ Hutch soothed._ "It's okay, babe. I know it still hurts to hear, but it's not new information. Take a deep breath and ask for what you came for." _

Starsky did as he was told. "The warehouse," he exhaled. "I need to know what you know about it and if you ever heard anything about Hutch when he was alive."

Huggy looked conflicted; he didn't answer at first. "Man," he sighed. "Why you want to go digging into all this now? Didn't you hear me? Hutch is gone. No amount of info is going to bring him back."

_Gone. _

Starsky flinched.

_Hutch is gone. _

_"__Don't start,"_ Hutch warned. _"Don't you dare start getting soapy. You knew he was going to try this angle. You knew he was going to try to dissuade you from asking."_

"I need to know, Hug," Starsky insisted.

Huggy shook his head sadly. "I don't know nothing—"

"Don't lie." Expression darkening, Starsky lifted a finger of warning. "Don't you dare lie to me."

"That's the thing, Starsky, I'm not. There isn't any word on the street where Hutch is concerned. There never has been."

_"__How can that be?"_ Hutch's voice asked. _"I worked on the street for seven years, how can that possibly be?"_

Starsky didn't know. There were whispers about pretty much every cop who worked a beat in the city. Some were accurate and other blatantly false but they always existed, traded amongst snitches and hoods, overt and covert criminals, in endless effort to gain the upper hand immediately or to be tucked away into their memories be used when the time was right. Some cops got extorted by the very people they were aiming to bust; other lost their careers because the criminals they put behind bars wanted revenge and turned snitch.

"That doesn't make any sense," Starsky said.

"What about any of it makes sense?" Huggy countered. "In what world does Hutch get picked up and wiped out in some random warehouse? Who would do that? Who could do that? That boy was made out some pretty tough stuff. He wasn't going anywhere with anybody without a fight"

_"__I fought,"_ Hutch whispered. _"I fought so hard; you know that because you saw the blood." _

_Blood. _

Starsky's eyes snapped shut.

_No, I don't want to think about that. Not now. I can't think about that and this._

"I don't know anything about Hutch," Huggy repeated. "Word on the street about him is there is no word. Either he was squeaky clean or he never pissed somebody off enough to warrant the attention."

"He pissed somebody off," Starsky said. "Obviously."

"There is a third option."

Starsky finally opened his eyes. "What's that?"

"Maybe there was plenty word at some point in time or maybe there always has been and someone had been extra careful to keep the knowing parties silent. Maybe they killed them too. Or they coulda paid them off."

"Oh, come on, Hug," Starsky scoffed. "Hutch is a good cop but he's small change in the grand scheme. Who would care enough about him to do that?"

_"__Who cared enough to do what they did?"_ Hutch countered.

"What about Michael Bennett?" Starsky asked. "What do you know about him?"

"Nothing much," Huggy said. "He's a Bay Side boy. He lives in San Francisco; there's no tellin' what brought him here."

_"__Maybe I brought him here,"_ Hutch said.

Cringing as he looked abruptly at the table, Starsky couldn't tolerate the suggestion. Closing his eyes again, he forced a few deep breaths.

_Now, don't you start,_ he thought desperately_, _an order meant predominantly for Hutch_. Not here. Not now._

"And the warehouse?" He asked, opening one eye and then the other before looking at Huggy once more.

Huggy was appraising him suspiciously. "What wrong with you?" he asked. "Why are you acting so weird all of sudden. What have you and Sweet Alice been doing together? Have you finally graduated from alcohol to that little white power she loves so much?"

"Of course not."

"You have to be careful with Alice, Starsky. She's a bad influence. If I've told you once, I have told you a million times, a girl with that much sadness inside of her don't know how to quit. Quitting for her is dead."

_"__He's not wrong,"_ Hutch whispered. _"You know he's not. You're always so worried about what I don't like about you and Alice. Well, there it is, kiddo. She's gonna drag you down until there is no coming back up. She helped you OD, once. She can do it again." _

_That was months ago. _

_"__Which was not such a long time ago." _

"The warehouse," Starsky repeated, firmly shifting the topic of conversation. What did it matter if he spent his time with Alice? What did anyone care what they did? It wasn't anyone else's business other than their own. "Tell me what you know about the warehouse."

_"__Nothing,"_ Hutch whispered, seemingly just to spite him.

"Nothin'," Huggy echoed.

That, Starsky didn't believe. Anything worth knowing Huggy always knew—or he had ways of finding out. "Nothing," he pressed. "Or nothing much?"

"Same old story, man," Huggy sighed. "That warehouse is in a nasty district, but I don't have to tell you that. It's been abandoned for years. It's the type of place people go when they don't want to be seen, you dig?"

Starsky did. He knew the reputation of the docks. It was sketchy place for sketcher people. Nasty types, vile and menacing—or so he had heard. There was an unknown group that was known to hang around the waters; they were rumored to be a whole new breed of criminal—worse than Stryker had ever been. They were cunning, overly-violent and known to seek reparations from those who supposedly wronged them. And worse than that, nobody seemed to have a good idea of who they really were.

_"__But those are all stories,"_ Hutch reminded. _"Nobody in our line of work has ever actually seen any of these people. We've heard whispers of their crimes, but we never responded to a call, read or wrote a report that proved any of it true."_

"This a weird detail," Huggy said. "And if I tell you this don't go asking for more, because you know damn-well I don't run with crowds who will give me more. A dude's gotta have his personal limits, and those cats on the docks are way past mine."

"Let me have it."

"Rumor has it that all the illicit activities at that particular warehouse had been shut down for a month before Hutch went missing, because the FBI raided and seized the building. Now, whether that's just all rumor and hubbub you're gonna have to decide. I don't think it's too farfetched myself, especially seeing how the FEDs are still controlling traffic in and out of that place and how they've tried to bury what happened there."

_"__What did really happen there?"_ Hutch whispered.

Starsky had seen the blood and the aftermath, but he didn't really know. Hutch's soft question was one that echoed through his mind, haunting him relentlessly for the remainder of the day.


	9. Chapter 9

**BAY CITY PD DISPATCH OFFICE**

**JULY 25, 1979**

The room was alive with noise.

It always was. The phones lines were lit up, ringing constantly with little pause between calls—not an uncommon occurrence for a city of this size with an ever-increasing crime rate. Walking between the lines of shared tables, large and long mounted on the both sides of the small room, Starsky's eyes first surveyed the radio equipment placed in front of each respective dispatcher's daily seating arrangement, then each woman working at her space.

Some of them he recognized and others hadn't seen before. He didn't know the name of the one he was looking for; he was waiting to recognize her voice as the frantic dispatcher who had broadcast the call requesting emergency assistance at the abandoned warehouse where Hutch and Bennett were found. He didn't know her name or what she looked like, but he would never forget the sound of her panicked voice. It was forever imprinted in his memory like the interior of the warehouse, the bodies, and blood.

_Oh, God, there had been so much blood. The floor had been stained with pools of Hutch's blood. _

Starsky shook his head to clear the hindering thoughts. They wouldn't do any good; it wouldn't solve anything or make the questions he had come to ask any easier to voice. He was already in a bad mood, allowing himself to continue to dwell on such things were only going to make him feel worse and lead to other things. Another barstool in yet another bar, another day of drinking where he would lose count of how many drinke he had consumed in effort to soothe a pain that seemed intent to never ebb or heal.

The ringing of phones and overlapping chatter of the dispatchers were jarring and headache inviting—something he was already courting due to lack of sleep. He had suffered another restlessness night—no thanks to Alice or Hutch's voice as both of them seemed to be in terrible moods.

Someone had moved into the apartment across the hall; a woman according to Alice, who had spent the entire night moaning about the development. From this dramatic display, Starsky gathered that his new neighbor was pretty, which was such an irrelevant detail in the grand scheme of things, because A, he had no interest in dating a chick—or anyone else for that matter—and B, sleeping your neighbors never went the way you wanted it to.

No matter how good the sex was, the situation always soured and then inevitably it became awkward and then someone felt the need to move. Messing around with neighbors was a definite mistake, and, besides, he absolutely did not want a girlfriend. Something that Alice must have missed the memo about, because to say she was rattled by this mystery woman would have been an understatement. The fact that she had spent the night with him rather than a paying gig with one of her clients was proof of that. It was something that took Starsky by surprise, because he had never taken Alice for the jealous type. He hadn't taken her for a lot of things.

Hutch's voice, however, suddenly seemed determined to take Starsky as apathetic and complacent. His dialogue during the night was equally as persistent, annoying, and unsettling as Alice's obsession with the new neighbor.

_"__Come on, come on, come on,"_ Hutch had whispered impatiently. _"Now that you've talked to Huggy what are you going to do?" _

_Nothing. _

_"__You have to do something. Doing nothing isn't an option, especially now that you've finally started. What Huggy said about the warehouse was weird. How about you dig into that?"_

_Nope. _

_"__No isn't an option, kiddo. Quit moping like a teenage girl and start thinking like a cop. What's the next logical step? If you and me were working the case, what would we do next?"_

_I don't want to do this, Hutch. We're not workin' this case. _

_"__Aren't we?" _Hutch laughed. _"I may not be beside you; you might not be able to see me anymore, but, trust me, I'm here, and I'm going to continue to do what I always did—" _

_Be a pain in my ass?_

_"__No, help and challenge you. I'm going to support you while you do what you do best. You're a good cop, Starsk. Don't go throwing away your career just because you feel bad. Now, what's the next logical step? What do we need to find out?"_

Tracking down the dispatcher who had put out the call about the crime scene the day Hutch's body had been found seemed like a good direction to head in. Hutch's voice hadn't agreed, but that didn't stop Starsky from chasing the lead. If Hutch wanted him to investigate then he didn't get a choice on what direction Starsky went.

Starsky did a couple of laps between the dispatch desks, slowly up and then back down, carefully listening for the elusive voice. He was just beginning his third lap when he noticed he had become the focus of one of the dispatchers he did recognize.

Chair pushed slightly away from her station, Mary Tate sat with her legs crossed and back facing the wall. Tapping the eraser end of her pencil against the side of the table, she cast him a curious look.

"Searching for somebody in particular, Detective Starsky?" she asked.

"Maybe," he said.

"Any luck?"

"Nope."

"Know her name?"

"I wish."

"What does she look like?"

"I don't know," Starsky admitted. "I only heard her voice."

Pursing her lips, Mary nodded curtly and motioned with her pencil for him to come closer. When he did, she discarded her headset and pointed at the floor, prompting him to crouch down so that their conversation could be quietly continued.

"I was wondering when I was going to see you show up around here," she whispered. "You want to know about the girl, right? The one that put out the Code 3, 10-54 that ended up being Hutch?"

Starsky nodded. He and Hutch always liked Mary; she was direct and personable, a pleasure to work with and a riot to go out with on a Saturday night.

_"__She always knows what you want,"_ Hutch's voice concurred. _"Before you ask the question, she's already giving you the answer."_

"She's not here," Mary continued softly. "She's gone."

"Transferred?" Starsky asked.

"No." Mary shook her head. "Gone. Fired."

_"__Fired?"_ Hutch asked.

"What?" Starsky frowned. "When? Why?"

"I can tell you, but not here." Mary carefully surveyed the room, seemingly verifying they hadn't become the focus of an unwelcome party. "And actually, that might be a better question for Laura. She's the girl you're looking for."

"Where can I find her?"

Mary shook her head. "Not a great idea for you to go looking. The Chief called all us girls into a meeting after Hutch was found. We were given strict instructions not to speak to you about what happened."

_"__What did happen?"_ Hutch snorted. _"All someone did was call in a crime. Why all the secrecy?"_

"Starsky," Mary said, her voice impossibly soft. "Dobey was in on that meeting too and so was a guy from the FBI. I heard they another one on those meetings on your floor, in your squad room before you came back. They were adamant, okay? So, don't you dare go using your professional resources to find Laura, because that's only going to be trouble for me and you."

"How am I supposed to talk to her then?" Starsky asked.

"I have her home number and yours; I'll coordinate a meeting."

_"__That's a risk,"_ Hutch whispered. _"That is a huge risk she's willing take for you. You better not waste it." _

"Thanks," Starsky whispered. "I know what you're doing and I won't forget it."

"I'm not doing it for you," Mary insisted. "Hutch was one of us, Starsky. It's a shame what happened. He was one of the good ones and somebody should care that he's gone." She scoffed. "It's weird isn't it? Usually when a cop is murdered every other cop he ever worked with is demanding piece of the action and perp. No expense is spared, no rock is left unturned to figure out who did it or why. But they're not doing that with Hutch. They're trying to pretend he never existed instead."

Xx

After speaking to Mary, Starsky was hoping to leave Metro without crossing paths with anyone else who worked on the fifth floor. He almost made it too, until coming upon Cooper in the parking garage.

Sitting on the Torino's hood, his legs dangling over the wheel-well, Cooper smiled as Starsky approached.

Starsky frowned. "Why don't you go sit on that piece of shit you call a car? Get off my hood."

Cooper didn't move. "I've been waiting for you."

"That's funny, because I've been trying to avoid you."

"Too bad for you, I'm a hard man to lose," Cooper said. "Did you get what you came for?"

Though the question was innocent enough, something about Cooper's grin and the odd glint in his eyes made Starsky uneasy.

_"__Maybe you're paranoid,"_ Hutch whispered. _"Because of what Mary said."_

"What are you takin' about?" Starsky asked Cooper.

"You never come around Metro anymore, Starsky, unless you have an explicit reason. Either you were going to see Dobey or you were doing something else. Now, I know you didn't talk to Dobey, so that means you saw somebody else."

"What makes you think that?"

"Because I'm a good detective." Sliding off the Torino, Cooper's smile became a grin. "Speaking of detective work, you better dust off your badge."

"Why?"

"Because Dobey finally gave us a case."

"I don't want a case," Starsky snorted.

Stepping forward, intent on opening the Torino's door and driving away from the conversation, his expression darkened as Cooper aligned himself between Starsky and his beloved car. It was such an odd thing to do; Starsky might have laughed if the action hadn't angered him so much.

_What the fuck does he think he's doing?_

_"__Play along, Starsk,"_ Hutch recommended. _"Let him say whatever he came for, so you can leave." _

"It's a good case," Cooper said. "There have been two female victims, both were last seen alive in the popular disco-tech _Fever_. Both of their bodies were dumped on Skyway Drive, and they were both discarded wearing identical, gold-plated, ankle bracelets engraved with the name "Sharon". Serial offender from the looks of it. Now, you can't tell me that doesn't sound exciting and interesting. Shit, there's even dancing."

Starsky was unimpressed. "Dancing, huh?"

"It's an undercover job. A regular watch and wait at a disco joint. Think about it Starsky, pretty ladies… dancing… late nights and later mornings. It'll keep you away from Metro for a least a few days or weeks depending on how long it takes to solve. Besides, I thought you liked dancing."

Starsky didn't know how Cooper could have known such a thing. It wasn't as though they'd ever discussed it. "I don't mind dancing one bit; it's the current company I have an issue with."

"Touché. Well, lucky for you we're not working alone. Sergeant Lizzy Thorpe has also been assigned to be this creep's next victim."

"Never heard of her."

"Then let me catch you up. Sergeant Thorpe is third class out on loan from Vice. She has an eight-year-old daughter and eight-foot-tall husband. She's small but feisty, pretty and blonde which is what makes her perfect bait."

"Sounds like you know a lot about just about everybody."

"I like to know exactly what I'm getting into," Cooper said seriously. "Who I'm working with. What they are and aren't capable of. Lizzy's meeting us at the club at 10 pm. Stake out begins tonight, buddy. Time to get to work."

"Great," Starsky said. Pushing past Cooper, he thrust open the Torino's door. "I'll take the dayshift."

Slamming the door and backing out of the parking space, Starsky couldn't help a smile as he left Cooper standing behind.

"Starsky!" Cooper yelled after him. "The perp snatches his victims from a disco hall in the middle of the night. There is no _dayshift_!"

Xx

_"__Are sure you don't want a piece of that case?" _Hutch asked when Starsky stopped at a red light. _"Disco dancing and a perp targeting women at a club... Cooper's right, that is awfully interesting."_

"Cooper is wrong," Starsky said firmly.

_"__He wasn't wrong about you and dancing. Come on, kiddo. You're going to get paid to hang around in a club. It's like Dobey handpicked this case for you, to ease you back into doing what you do best. It's a good opportunity to get to know Cooper a little bit better. It would be nice to see him work undercover. Get a feel for how good he really is." _

"I don't want to know how good he is."

Starsky refused to entertain the idea; he wanted no part of an undercover case where Hutch wasn't by his side. Besides, didn't Hutch see it? Couldn't he understand how the proposed case was so reminiscent of one they had worked years ago?

The details of the crimes were different and so were the types of dancing, but it was a similar situation. How could he not see it? How could Hutch not remember?

"I don't want to go dancing, Hutch," Starsky said firmly, punctuating his statement with his fist on the steering wheel. "And you out of all people should know why."

Thankfully, Hutch didn't reply. Not that it would have mattered much if he had, because Starsky was already considering the memories awoken by talk of another dancing case.

Back then, their undercover presence had been prompted by extortion, not homicide. Back then, Starsky had begged Dobey to assign he and Hutch the case. Back then, things had been so different than what they had recently become.

It was five years into their professional partnership and things between them had settled. Their respective insults and barbs were no longer aimed at each other with intent to annoy and wound, rather out of fondness. Some might have even said that their teasing was prompted by love, because it was awfully hard to spend that much time with someone and not end up loving them—at least a little bit.

There was just something about trusting another person the way they trusted each other; there was just something about knowing you had a friend who was going to be with you no matter what; and there was just something about being completely incapacitated, defenseless and dependent upon this other person that intensified feelings that were always bound to bubble up and cause trouble for both of them.

Starsky had done his best over the years to ignore what Hutch looked like. How he felt when his partner grasped his shoulder or nudged him. And he tried to forget how good it had felt the day his lucky streak had finally run out and he had been shot for the very first time. Not the pain, because that hadn't felt good; it had been horrendous. The way the Hutch had held him close and talked to him quietly, asking a serious of unimportant questions in effort to keep Starsky conscious until the ambulance arrived, that had been the good part.

There was something about the panic rising his chest that made Starsky voice a fear he hadn't dare say before.

Grasping the lapel of Hutch's jacket, leaving it streaked with his own blood, Starsky had looked up into Hutch's eyes, his voice a thick whisper, _"I don't wanna die... Oh, God... Hutch... Hutch, my pop... he died in a street just like this... I can't... I don't want to be like him_!"

And there was something about Hutch's response that was so perfect, comforting and needed.

_"__You are nothing like your father," _he said firmly. _"And I will never let you die in a street like this. You're going to fine, kiddo. I promise, you will always be okay as long as I'm around." _

And Starsky did end up okay.

He took a month off while the bullet wound healed, and seeing as he wasn't needed on a daily roster beside Starsky at work, Hutch took the month off too. He spent the first two weeks protectively lingering; first at the hospital and then at Starsky's apartment. By the end of the second week, Starsky had recovered enough to take care of himself, so Hutch disappeared for the third.

At the time, Starsky figured it was just as well, because while his body had nearly healed, he knew he was never going to be quite the same ever again. Being the sole focus of Hutch's attention, allowing him to take care of him in the ways in which he had, had shifted Starsky's feelings for his partner, transforming from platonic to a desire that was difficult to ignore.

It had to be ignored, because Starsky's preference for men over women was yet another that Hutch didn't share.

Hutch liked women. He liked them a lot. His favorite type was the kind of lady whose career ambitions promised no attachments. Flight attendants and women met under the pretense of _"I want to sleep with you tonight and then never see you again". _He didn't like relationships or commitments beyond his own life and career. Some women probably thought Hutch was selfish for that, but Starsky thought he was being honest and smart.

Back then, it had been terrific for Hutch to be perpetually single, because it made

harboring an ever-growing crush on him that much easier to do. Hutch may have spent a few hours a week with a random chick here and there, but he spent the remainder of his time with Starsky.

Things were good, no, they were great, and then the dancing case happened and things were never the same again.

Dressed in attire that declared he was an upper-class yokel, Hutch had moved across the floor of Ginger Evans' famed dancing studio with outrageously clumsy and inept movements. At first, Starsky had been impressed, taken aback by Hutch's dedication and commitment to his undercover role of rich country bumpkin in dire need of dance lessons. Then, a few long weeks into the undercover job, he finally realized Hutch wasn't pretending.

It was as funny was it was endearing, because perfect Hutch finally had a flaw. He was a terrible dancer, rhythmless, graceless and awkward. It was a joy to watch him on the dance floor blubbering around like an idiot— oh, who was he kidding? Starsky would have watched Hutch anyway, shit dancing or not. That was, until the situation became a bit more serious.

It was apparent that, despite the hours he spent on the dance floor receiving lessons from their unsuspecting mark, Hutch wasn't becoming a better dancer. His lack of confidence was making him worse. Upon this realization, the humor of Hutch's ineptitude began to fade and Starsky began to view his partner's clumsy dancing as less charming and more pathetic.

He decided he needed to step in and try to manage the situation. He was posing as a dance instructor, after all. If he had become to view his partner's dancing as a turn-off, then there was no telling what Hutch's dance teacher thought. She was the lady they were looking to nail, by the way—Hutch in a more literal sense—and there wasn't going to any of that if Hutch didn't get himself together and starting acting more debonair.

Starsky took pity on his partner and suggested he come over one night so they could work on his dancing. It was a completely altruistic offer, dictated by professional necessity; there was absolutely nothing in it for him—or that was what Starsky had told himself at the time.

But there was just something about how Hutch had looked when Starsky had finally offered, a little intimidated and relieved. There was something about how Hutch's body felt during that late-night dance lesson, rigid and tight, consumed by worry and self-doubt, that made Starsky more sure of himself.

_"__You need to relax," _Starsky had said. _"It's just you and me, there's no need to be so uptight."_

_"__I'm not uptight," _Hutch had snapped. His hands clenched Starsky's shoulder and hand a bit tighter, refuting the statement. He absolutely was, without a shadow of a doubt, uptight.

He had wanted to lead—he had always wanted to lead in anything they ever did—but Starsky refused. It didn't make sense for the student to lead the teacher.

_"__Jesus," _Starsky sighed, when things were beginning to look particularly hopeless. Letting go of his partner, he took a step back. _"Your palms are sweaty and your back is so rigid that I feel like you're gonna break in half. Are you this nervous when you're dancing with Marcia or are you just uncomfortable because you're dancing with me?"_

_"__No," _Hutch said quietly. Posture deflating, his lack of confidence was clear. _"No, I'm more relaxed with you." _

_"__That's not good news. Come on, you need to get it together, man. Nobody is going to want to jump into the sack with you if you don't start acting a little more suave. Now, come on. It's easy, just do what I do." _

_"__Ah, forget it. It isn't going to do any good. I'm never going to get it anyway." _

_"__Yes, you will. You just gotta have a little faith in yourself, that's all. Dancing is all about getting out of your own head for a while. Letting go of everything and letting your body move. I know that ain't easy for you, so let start with something that is." _

He took Hutch's hands and pulled him close.

_"__Slowing dancing is easy," _he continued. _"Everyone can slow dance. Just hug me and slowly move your feet." _

Starsky hadn't intended for the dance to feel so intimate. He hadn't had an agenda when he initiated it, because, after all, slow dancing was easy and at that particular moment it was important for Hutch to feel like there was something he could do.

But there was something about the way Hutch smelled up close, a mixture of sweat, deodorant, and cologne that reminded Starsky of freshly cut Christmas trees. There was something about the way he felt when he finally relaxed, his body finally loose and comfortable, swaying perfectly with Starsky's own. And there was something about the way he rested his chin on Starsky's shoulder and the words he eventually said.

_"__I get nervous when I don't know how to do something," _Hutch admitted softly, as though the statement was a secret.

_"__No? Really?"_

_"__I'm supposed to know everything and be prepared for anything. I'm supposed to know exactly what I'm doing and how to react. I need to be in control. I need to be perfect. Doing what I do, it's dangerous to be any other way." _

_"__What do you mean doing what you do? Doing what we do, buddy, and I don't expect you to perfect, Hutch."_

_"__Other people do." _

_"__Nobody does," _Starsky assured, easily dismissing the claim. _"That shit's all in your head, and I thought I told you to get out of your head and relax." _

_"__I wish I could." _Hutch loosened his grip, pulling back slightly to peer down at Starsky. _"And I wish that were true."_

There something about the glint in Hutch's eyes, soft and vulnerable, that made Starsky wish something else were true. Then, he quickly found himself not wishing anything at all, rather taking his own advice. Throwing thought and caution to the wind, he allowed his body to move. Later, he would look back at his action, struggling to justify it as he agonized over what he had done.

Cupping Hutch's neck firmly, Starsky pulled him into a kiss. It was good—no, it was great—as far as first kisses went. Deep and passionate, positively electric until the moment Hutch pulled away. It was the best kiss Starsky had ever had, up until the moment he opened his eyes.

Taking a series of backwards steps, Hutch was horrified.

_"__That shouldn't have happened," _he said. Lifting his hands, he placed them on his head in a panicked manner. _"Oh, my God! That never should have happened!" _

_"__I'm sorry," _Starsky said quickly, feeling both frightened and ashamed. _"I don't... I don't what I was thinking. I don't know what to say." _

_"__I have to go. I have to leave. I'm sorry, but I can't be here anymore." _

Then Hutch was gone, and he remained gone.

The dance studio investigation went unfinished—at least by them. It became the only case they ever quit working mid-investigation. It was Dobey who told Starsky Hutch's abrupt absence was due to a family emergency in the Midwest. Starsky never told his superior he suspected the story was a lie.

Hutch was gone for three weeks. It was plenty of time for Starsky to brood about what had happened, to agonize about every detail of that night and wonder why he had done such a stupid thing. He didn't think there was any coming back from what had happened. There was no fixing what had been done. Just like Colby had made a stupid, impulsive decision effectively ending his professional partnership, Starsky had now done the same.

Then, suddenly, Hutch came back.

Starsky would never forget the night when the fierce pounding on his apartment door awoke him from a dead sleep. He would never forget the way his stomach had flipped then turned when he threw open the door to find Hutch standing outside.

Appearing exhausted, Hutch was a mess. His clothes were clean but disheveled—telltale evidence that he had endured an agonizingly long flight. His knuckles were scratched and scabbed over; there were numerous faint bruises marking his face and neck and a large dark one his cheek. He looked like he had been in a one hell of a fight—a fight that perhaps he hadn't won.

It was Hutch's eyes that bothered Starsky the most. They were decidedly sad, haunted and glazed. They pushed him to believe Dobey's reasoning for Hutch's absence; they him left him wondering what kind of relationship Hutch had with his family in the Midwest.

Was it them who had given birth to his partner's need for perfection, his nervousness and fear of not being good enough?

_"__Hutch?"_

_"__I'm sorry," _Hutch whispered. His voice was quiet, wavering and tearful. It didn't sound like it should belong him at all. Hutch was usually so strong and he sounded so weak.

_"__It's okay," _Starsky soothed, feeling a bit like he had just been thrust into a conversation that was already half over. Skipping greetings and platitudes they had started up right where they last left off.

_"__No. It's not."_

Grabbing Hutch's arm, Starsky pulled him into his apartment, for fear that if he didn't do something Hutch would remain permanently rooted in the doorway.

_"__It's fine, Hutch. I'm the one who's sorry. I shouldn't have kissed you."_

_"__It wasn't that I wanted to leave, I was just so afraid of what would happen if I stayed." _

_"__It's okay."_

_"__It isn't okay," _Hutch insisted.

_"__I know, but it's okay now."_

_"__No, you don't know. I had to leave, because I couldn't stay. I had to go away because I didn't think I could still stay and follow through on what I was supposed to do. But going away didn't help anything. All I did was think about you and all the things I should have said and did. I shouldn't have left like that... I was scared…This is all a big mistake. I wasn't supposed to like you, Starsky. And I was never supposed to love you, but somehow… I do."_

Though it was everything Starsky had wanted to hear, it was hard to feel joy when Hutch was so uncharacteristically upset. It was unnerving to see him this way, tired and irrational, so desperate for Starsky to understand something Starsky was sure he already understood. It was frightening to own up to feelings you never knew you had. It was terrifying to know the love you felt for someone else could threaten everything you worked so hard to have. As a cop, being in a same-sex relationship was far from accepted; wanting to be in bed with your partner was dangerous and somehow worse.

_"__Okay," _Starsky whispered, unable to think of anything else.

_"__No! It isn't okay!" _Hutch cried. _"Aren't you listening?" _

_"__I am. I promise you, I am, so listen to me. You're tired and I think is a conversation we need to have tomorrow, in the morning, when you feel better." _

_"__I'm not going to feel better,"_ Hutch snorted thickly. _"There is no feeling better." _

_"__Of course, there is. If you love me and I love you, then I don't see a problem."_

_"__Oh, but you should. You shouldn't love me, Starsky; you're only going to end up hurt." _

_"__I don't believe that," _Starsky said. _"I seem to remember a man who said I would always be okay as long as he was around." _

It was the statement that did Hutch in. The reiteration of his own words that transformed his tears into devastated sobs.

That night was the first and last time, Starsky ever saw Hutch cry. Even so, it was the beginning of something truly wonderful, because the rest of that night and the morning which came after brought many more firsts. Things that became habits and rituals that came to an abrupt end when Hutch died.

Their relationship was beautiful and it was sad, and it was all because of dancing.

So, no, Starsky wasn't ready to work another dancing case. He wasn't eager stand on a dance floor with the expectation he bust a murderer when all he could do was remember Hutch and all the memories they shared.

Xx

Starsky arrived at Venice Place to an empty apartment and a ringing phone.

"Yeah?" he answered, pressing the receiver to his ear.

"Meet us at the Ocean Bar tonight," Mary said. "Do you know it?"

"No. But I'll find it."

"Come a little after midnight. We'll be waiting."


	10. Chapter 10

**THE OCEAN BAR**

**JULY 26, 1979**

The bar was in Tustin.

Located a rough twenty miles from Bay City, it was a tiny, unincorporated seaside town, whose biggest crime had been being established on an unfortunate piece of land. With only one dirt road leading in and out, it was composed of exactly four houses and one building, all of which stood on the opposite side of the sea. It was the safest option— the only option, seeing as the entire other side of the road was a jagged cliff.

In the daylight hours, the view of waters was stunningly beautiful; even under the cover of night, the town was a dump.

Starsky parked the Torino in front of the building, got out of the car, and paused. Looking between his closed car door and the small strip of beaten- down dirt road. He couldn't help but feel uneasy.

Dark and decrepit, the houses appeared abandoned; the building before him, didn't look much better. Worn curtains lined the windows on the inside, blocking the only would be light from either direction. There was no mounted lighting on the exterior, but there was a hint of an old sign. Squinting through the darkness, he could make out one faded word: **BAR **

_"__This sure is some place you've taken us to."_ Hutch gave voice to Starsky's building unease. _"I don't like it. I don't like one bit. You shouldn't be here alone. Why would Mary invite you a place like this?" _

"I have my gun," Starsky said. Whether it was to appease Hutch's worry or his own, he was unsure. "And I know how to fight."

_"__That's an awfully steep cliff on the other side of the street, kiddo. Just be careful you don't get too close to that. Make sure no one makes you get close to it." _

"Oh, that's a big 10-4 on that."

He locked the door to the Torino, then, fingering his gun under his jacket, he approached the door to the supposed bar. The doorknob felt loose in his hand as he turned it, dirty too. Grimacing, he felt a grainy, sticky substance cling to his fingers and palm.

_"__I don't even want to know what is,"_ Hutch groaned disgustedly.

Stepping through the doorway, Starsky was immediately enveloped in light. The interior of the building was not what he expected. It was not what the rundown exterior seemed to promise it would be.

A bit ramshackle, the room was narrow, old and clean; it was more reminiscent of an old saloon than anything he'd ever seen in the city. The wooden floorboards were dented and worn down; the ceiling was high, crumbling and stained. Standing on the right side of the room, there was no seating in front of the oak paneled bar and the shelf behind it was lined with liquor bottles. There were a few tables, short, round and empty scattered around the room.

An open wooden staircase on the left side of the room, leading up to a series of closed doors; an old square piano sat beyond it, its cover lined with dust. It reminded him of the piano that sat in Venice Place, untouched since Hutch's fingers had last danced across the keys. Hutch wasn't the best at playing that particular instrument—something else Starsky had discovered over time—but he had tried and Starsky had listened when he had.

_"__Huh,"_ Hutch baffled voice mused as Starsky's eyes roamed the room.

_"__Huh, is right,"_ Starsky concurred.

Timeworn and hoary, this was an old man's bar; the type of place that didn't belong where it was. It reminded Starsky of a place his pop used to frequent when he was alive, back in the early 50's when it hadn't been quite so gouache to allow your kid to sit at the table while you talked shop with your police buddies. Starsky wondered how old he had been back then. Five? Six? Old enough to sit quietly on his father's knee and young enough to have no recollection of what the grownups had discussed.

"Can I help you?" a woman's voice asked. The statement was demanding, seemingly asked more out of annoyance than courtesy.

Looking past the bar, Starsky saw a woman appear out of the shadows which had settled in the hallway. Short, stout, and decidedly old, she settled behind the bar and frowned, her sun-kissed face wrinkling further as she assessed him in a craggy manner. She looked old enough to be his mother—possibly even his grandmother had she been married young enough.

"You lost?" she asked.

"No," Starsky said.

"Okay, then, are you lookin' for a drink, or a room and a woman to join you?" Because this isn't the kinda place where a decent young lady might spend her time and I'm fresh out of rooms, seeing as I only have the three and old Charlie Evans just took the last of 'em. I do have plenty of booze, though." She nodded at the line of bottles behind her. "Take your pick, new guy."

"New guy?"

"I haven't seen you around before, so that makes you new. Trust me, a town like this makes you pay attention to everyone you see. What are you doing here?"

"Waiting for a friend."

"Oh, honey," she snorted. "I hate to break to you but if somebody invited you here then they ain't your friend."

Forcing nonchalance, Starsky grinned. "Then maybe you and me can be friends. You got a name to go with your pretty face?"

The woman frowned. "You looking to get slapped, smartass? It isn't polite to remind an old woman of her age."

_"__Smooth,"_ Hutch laughed.

"I'm not your friend," the woman continued. "We won't be friends, no matter what brought you here. Whatever it is you're after, you best try a different angle to get it."

"I didn't mean to offend you," Starsky said.

"I'm not offended," she snorted. "A woman my age getting uptight about a boy your age making asinine comments, could you imagine?" She tilted her head at liquor bottles behind her. "How about that drink?"

"Uh…"

_"__No,"_ Hutch whispered insistently. _"Absolutely not. You don't know this person, and besides that, you saw the cliff outside. The last thing you need to do is starting drinking, forgetting what happened, how you came to this town and why."_

"You best not be taking me up on that offer," the woman said. "'Less you plan to sleep in your car. Like I said, my upstairs rooms are full, and it's dangerous to go driving around here at night, especially after a drink."

"That's funny," Starsky said. "Your rooms are full, but I didn't see any cars outside. Where did these people come from?"

"None of your damn business. Don't you recall? You're a stranger in this town."

"And you don't want to be friends," Starsky said flatly. "Yeah, I know."

Planting his elbows on top of the bar, Starsky leaned into it, wondering if he had any real friends left. Dobey, Huggy, Alice, and Cooper were all names that readily came to mind. But his respective relationships with them all posed their own difficulties; they all had an air of falseness to them.

Dobey and Huggy's concern seemed genuine; they both wanted him to snap out of whatever depressed state he had sunk into since Hutch's death. It was Cooper and Alice who Starsky felt the most crippled by—most distrusting of. They didn't know him the way they thought they did. They never would, because he didn't want them to.

Expelling a hearty sigh, Starsky ran his hands through his hair and thought about the woman's drink offer. She was right, it wasn't a wise decision—especially given the cliff on the other side of the road. But the town was unsettling and strange. Dark and seemingly abandoned with exception of this odd bar and the cantankerous woman in front of him, he was alone. He didn't like being alone. It made him anxious and he was already apprehensive enough, sitting in an odd, unfamiliar town, waiting for Mary and woman he'd never met to hopefully obtain information of unknown importance.

Huggy's information had been lackluster. Mary's had been confounding but not explicitly helpful. He was sure there were significant details to consider if he really thought about them, connected and coupled that information with what Walters had previously said—like the lack of rumors on the street surrounding Hutch's life and the lengths the FBI had gone to control the details surrounding his disappearance and death. Mary had said they had conducted meetings in his absence; she had said they warned others not to discuss what happened to Hutch.

There so much to think about if he could only summon the courage and energy to do so. As it stood, he wasn't much for thinking these days. Though he should have been, he wasn't.

Wasn't it enough he had sought out the people to ask the questions? It didn't seem right that he had to think about their answers too. He didn't want to look into any of this; he wasn't sure he want to how or why Hutch had died for fear of what it would make him do—though that was detail he was too ashamed to admit.

If it would have been the other way around—if he would have been killed in place of Hutch—then Hutch would have discovered what happened by now. He would have done anything and everything he could to find out what had happened and why. He wouldn't have gotten caught up in grief, allowed it to hinder and distract him. Even now—even in death—Hutch was the one who was leading Starsky through these motions; it was he who was prompting him to talk to people and ask questions.

The liquor bottles seemed to stare back Starsky, their glossy labels inviting him to choose the one that would soothe him best.

_"__Don't do it," _Hutch warned. _"Don't you dare—" _

"I will take that drink," Starsky said. "Two fingers of bourbon, straight up."

Eyebrows raising, the woman looked slightly impressed. "I didn't take you for a bourbon man."

_"__That's because you're not,"_ Hutch said. _"You're in a mood. You always reach for the stiffer stuff when you can't cope with how you feel." _

Chastised, Starsky hung his head as the woman poured the drink and slid in front of him. He didn't look at her again until the glass was empty.

"Don't for ask another," she warned. "Like I said, there's a pretty bad cliff waiting outside."

"There was supposed to be somebody waiting for me here."

Starsky glanced at his watch, noted it was past twelve-thirty, and wondered what was taking Mary so long. Did she run into trouble or was her absence due to a sudden lack of nerve? He hoped it wasn't either. Mary was too strong of a chick to ever loose her confidence; he didn't want his questions to have caused her any trouble.

"Looks like I might be getting stood up," he added.

"Looks like you're not." The woman nodded at the door.

Starsky turned just in time to see the door open. Two women entered the bar and approached the counter, one was Mary, the other he didn't recognize—not that he expected to. Hiding beneath a long, gray coat, the collar was pulled up around her neck. She didn't look young or old, rather some indistinguishable age in-between. She looked timid and afraid. He wondered what Mary had said to convince her to talk, if she had been to this town and bar before, and what she had thought of the cliff outside if she hadn't.

Did she think she had been brought here to be set up? Deemed untrustworthy by whatever power had tried to silence her, her very presence cementing a terrible fate.

_"__Now, that's paranoid,"_ Hutch whispered. _"Maybe let that theory go."_

"Sorry we're late," Mary said quietly. "We needed to be sure you were alone."

"It's fine," Starsky said, pulling a few dollars from his wallet, he left them on the bar. "You're here now. Let's talk."

They settled into the table on the far side of the room, the furthest they could get away from the bar counter and the women behind it. Though that didn't end up mattering much. By the time they were seated and settled, she was gone, returning to the dark hallway from which she had first appeared.

"You gotta love Maggie," Mary said, grinning as she looked between Starsky and the empty bar. "You don't even have to ask for privacy, she just gives it to you because it's what she prefers herself."

"Maggie," Starsky repeated, feeling slightly advantaged. For as coy as the woman had been about her name, it was amusing Mary had disclosed it so freely.

"We shouldn't stay long," Mary warned. "This town is pretty isolated, but that doesn't mean we can't be followed."

"We've already been noticed," Starsky said. "Maggie saw all of us; if you wanted secrecy you should have picked a different spot."

"She won't say anything," Mary countered. "Like I said, Maggie's a fan of privacy. She's about as trustworthy as they come."

Starsky wanted to ask how Mary had come across this town and Maggie. How she had somehow closed the gap between stranger and friend, gaining enough of the gruff woman's trust to earn knowledge of her name. But he didn't asked, because it didn't matter and he quickly realized he didn't care.

"Starsky meet Laura," Mary said, looking between the pair. "Laura meet Starsky. He's the guy I told you about. The detective who was killed in the warehouse was his partner."

"I know who he is," Laura said bluntly, the tone of her voice timid and unsure. "I recognize him."

"You recognize me?" Starsky asked.

"Yes, from the picture they showed me."

"What picture?"

Laura shook her head. "You want to know about the call, right? That's why we're all here, isn't it?"

Starsky nodded.

"I don't want disappoint you, but I don't know a lot," Laura said. "I took the call, I dispatched the officers, that's about it." She looked at Mary, her face set with worry. "Really, Mary, nothing about that day makes sense."

"Nothing about any of it makes sense," Starsky offered. "So, don't worry about it that, just tell me the truth."

"Just tell him what happened," Mary encouraged. "Just tell him what you told me."

"Okay," Laura whispered. "The call came in on the radio about a nasty looking crime scene, a couple of bodies and lots of blood. It sounded so awful that it made my stomach churn. I remember thinking it was odd because the guy who was talking to me, he was calm, so unaffected about what he telling me. It was like, what he had seen didn't bother him in the least."  
She shook her head disbelievingly. "I had nightmares about that call after and the guy who had actually been on the scene spoke to me as though we were having a casual conversation about the weather."

_"__That's weird,"_ Hutch's voice whispered. _"You saw the scene, kiddo; it was sickening. You watched the guys around you react to it; they weren't as upset as you were, but it affected them too. What kind of person could look at what you saw and not feel anything?" _

"Anyway," Laura continued, "the guy called in, requesting back-up and I—"

"What do you mean requesting back-up?" Starsky asked. "Wasn't it an emergency call."

It was what he had been told by Dobey—the only detail he had been allowed to be privy to— and what he had believed. The call about the warehouse had come in on an emergency line; it was made by a civilian who stumbled upon the crime scene. A person who had enough decency to report it but hadn't been brave or stupid enough to wait around for the police to show up. If this caller had requested back-up then that meant they weren't a civilian. They were a cop.

"It didn't come through on the emergency line," Laura confirmed. "It came through on an internal channel. He was one of ours, requesting back-up and an ambulance. He was so calm and calculated. I was the one who lost my composure."

Starsky couldn't disagree. He remembered hearing her alert, the shrill sound of her voice and the things she had said. Her unrestrained panic was what had demanded so many units redirect themselves to the scene; it was what prompted him to respond himself. Horror of that level couldn't be ignored.

"Back-up was requested, so I put out an all unit alert," Laura said quietly. "Two days later, they took me into the office and fired me."

"Tell him why," Mary prompted seriously. "Laura tell Starsky what they said to you the day they told you to leave."

"I…" Laura hesitated. Nervously clasping her hands together, she looked at Mary, then at Starsky, then at Mary again. "I can't. I shouldn't. It's nothing personal, it's just I can't repeat what they said. I gotta kid, you know. A little boy that I have to think about protecting from all of this. My husband, he walked out eight months ago, so we're back with my mom and she's sick. I have to think about them." She looked at Starsky, her eyes pleading for him to understand. "I shouldn't be here, you know. They told me not to talk to you; they told me never to talk about that day."

"And you're afraid of them," Starsky said.

"Didn't you hear me? I have a kid and sick mother to think about! I'm out of job and they can stop me from getting and keeping another. Of course, I'm afraid of them!"

"Then why did you come?" Starsky asked. "Why are you here if there isn't some small part of you that wants to be brave and tell me the truth?"

"Tell him what they said," Mary encouraged. "It'll be okay, Laura. Starsky can protect you—"

"How?" Laura demanded. "He doesn't know what he's up against. He couldn't even protect his own partner!"

Starsky flinched. He knew he was visibly shaken by the statement but he couldn't control his expression anymore than he could contain the anger and sadness awoken by the words. Laura was right; he couldn't protect her anymore than he had Hutch. Now that Hutch was dead, the only person he was interested in protecting was himself.

Laura was horrified. "Oh, I'm _so_ sorry! I shouldn't have said that. I am so frightened. I didn't even want to come here in the first place. You have no idea what they promised to do to me if they found out I spoke to you. What they vowed to do to my son and my mother."

"It's fine," Starsky said, though it was clear it wasn't. "Mary, Laura, thanks for meeting me, but I think I've heard enough."

_"__Oh, kiddo,"_ Hutch whispered. _"No, no, no. This is an opportunity. Don't waste it. She came here to talk to you tonight. She's so afraid; you know she won't have enough nerve to speak to you again."_

"I don't need to hear anymore," Starsky said as he stood. "I've heard enough."

_"__But you haven't,"_ Hutch insisted. _"At least not yet."_

Though the statement was true, Starsky left anyway.

Gripping the Torino's steering wheel tightly, he wondered what was waiting for him when he returned home. An empty apartment or Sweet Alice; he wasn't eager to find either. He didn't want to be alone but he was no mood to be in the company of Alice. He wanted to find a crowd and get lost in it. He wanted to find a bar or a club where nobody expected him to be anything other than another brooding drunk. He wanted to find someone—anyone who hadn't known the man he had once been, aggressive and slightly volatile, street smart and headstrong, and always determined. That was who he had been Hutch was alive, all slightly negative attributes turned positive by the man who stood by his side. They had complimented each other, held one another back or pushed them forward depending on what the occasion demanded.

Starsky wondered what kind of a man he was now. He didn't want to go home and find Venice Place empty, but the thought of having to be around Alice was enough to make him sick, because he knew Huggy was right. Alice was trouble and he was getting in too deep.

It wasn't that Huggy didn't like Alice—there were very few people in the world in which he didn't like—it was that he was afraid of her. Afraid of Starsky's friendship with her, rather. What terrible events she would inspire and then after they came to fruition stand back and claim she never knew—she never had the foresight to understand—what horrible things she had encouraged. She was a lot like the cliff on the side on Tustin. Worn down from harsh weather, full of steep, sharp edges. It was dangerous to get too close to her—just as both Huggy and Hutch had said.

Hutch remained oddly silent on the drive back to Bay City. It was just as well, because Starsky was too lost in a memory to pay him any mind. This wasn't a good memory—not even close. It was too entwined with Alice to be anything but bad.

Four years into his partnership with Hutch, Starsky had met Alice.

She had been pretty much the same back then as she was now. Same southern drawl, same sadness in her eyes, and the same penchant for white powder and hard liquor. She had looked younger then, prettier too. The elongated pain of the a few rough years in a row hadn't begun to show on her features, worn her down, making her more and more tired with each day that passed.

He and Hutch had needed information on a perp they were looking to bust and they were on a real dead-end road. Just when he thought they had run out of places to go and people to talk to, Hutch had taken them to a bar Starsky didn't recognize to talk to a woman he had never heard about before.

Her name Alice and Hutch called her sweet. The way she had cast her gaze upon Hutch when they both walked in was intimate enough to make Starsky's skin crawl. She had told them what they needed to know because Hutch had paid for her drinks. Then she had told them a little more because Hutch sat next her and didn't budge so much as a millimeter when her hand wandered and then settled possessively upon his upper thigh. The action was obscene, crass and bold; Starsky was nearly as disgusted with Alice's presumption as he was with Hutch's inability to move from beneath her grasp.

Obtaining the information they needed, it was Starsky got more he ever bargained for. They finished out the case, busted their perp, and were assigned a new investigation. Starsky didn't ask any questions about Alice until nearly a week after. When they were enjoying a nice quiet morning, sharing coffee and the newspaper at Hutch's kitchen table. When the jealousy over Alice's misplaced hand on his boyfriend's thigh finally got the best of him.

_ "__How do you know that girl?" _Starsky asked.

_"__What girl?" _

_"__You know, that girl that helped us make that bust a last week." _

_"__Alice?"_ Gaze focused on the newspaper in his hands, Hutch shrugged nonchalantly. _"She's just a chick I knew in another life." _

_"__What the does that mean?" _

_"__It means, I knew people before I became a Bay City cop, just like I'm sure you did, too." _

_"__But she's a hooker,"_ Starsky protested.

Hutch and Alice were an odd pair. It didn't make sense for either to know the other. For Alice to look at Hutch the way she had. She called him handsome.

_"__Handsome Hutch,"_ she had said as soon had she had laid eyes on him. She had appraised him like a prize. It was weird how she had looked at him. Like he was a mouse and she was a cat and they were about to embark on some secret game. And then she had put her hand on Hutch's thigh and Hutch hadn't even flinched.

_"__Terrific observation, Detective Starsky. What was your first clue?" _

_"__I'm being serious." _

_"__No," _Hutch said, lowering the newspaper to look Starsky in the eyes. _"You're jealous of a cocaine addicted lady of the night. Why don't you think about for a second, before you decide to continue this conversation or abandon it?" _

_"__I'm not jealous of a prostitute!" _

_"__Good,"_ Hutch said. _"Because you shouldn't be. You already have everything she wants." _

Starsky was perplexed. What was that supposed to mean? _"How do you know her?" _he pressed._ "When did you meet?" _

_"__That is none of your business." _

Starsky's anger was immediate. _"I don't understand why you can just—!" _

_"__I'm not going to fight about this, kiddo," _Hutch said firmly._ "Some things are better left alone." _

_"__What kind of things?" _Starsky scoffed. The answer was diminishing and dismissive. Bull-shit is what it was. Why couldn't Hutch answer the question? So what if he had sought out a prostitute in what he had called another life? He wasn't the only one to have ever done such a thing. _"What kind of things could possibly be better unexplained?" _

_"__The kind of things that people would rather deny than own up to. You know, Starsky, denial is the brain's way of protecting the heart; the brain knows it better to leave some questions unasked. Like the ones we fear the answers to, so we ignore them instead. Our brains always know what our heart doesn't. I think that if you take a moment and consider your question with your brain and not your heart, then maybe you might understand why I'm not going to answer it. Something things are just better left alone." _

Driving back to Bay City, Starsky couldn't help but wonder if that was what his brain was trying to do now. Was he trying to avoid discovering what really happened to Hutch because his heart was already broken enough?

Once back in city limits, surrounded by the glow of streetlights, he found himself parking in across the street from _Fever. _He didn't know how he gotten there or why he had decided to show. He wasn't dressed appropriately; he wouldn't be able to slip in unnoticed by the club crowd—the least of the requirements when conducting an undercover investigation. Still, he entered anyway.

He didn't speak to either Cooper or Lizzy—though he couldn't have picked her out of the group. He had arrived late and unprepared; he didn't want to blow their cover. He didn't dance. Instead, he sat at the bar and drank until closing time.

"You don't look good, buddy," Cooper said eventually when the club was clearing out.

Vision blurring, Starsky grunted. He was startled by the younger man's sudden presence. He didn't recall him approaching and he had long lost track of him on the dance floor.

Cooper sighed, his face contorting with a sadness Starsky didn't see. "Come on," he said, lending Starsky as stabilizing shoulder as he pulled him from the barstool. "Let me have your car keys and I'll take you home."

"Procure," Starsky slurred.

"What?"

"_Procure_. That's what Hutch says on occasions like this. He says, "Starsky, I'm _procuring_ your car keys, because your drunk." He's always saying shit like that. Like he's fancy or something. Like he wants the whole damn world to know how fucking smart he is. He is smart," he quickly qualified sadly. "So smart… and loyal…and trustworthy…and… and…"

_And dead. Hutch is dead. _

Starsky couldn't give words to this thought, so he ignored it and focused on his previous declaration.

"Hutch is smart," he repeated. He knew he was being too melodramatic; he couldn't help himself, because Hutch was gone and it wasn't right. Someone should miss him. Someone should know how good he was. How terrible it felt to miss him, to have to endure each and every second of the day knowing he was never coming back. He had left before but he always came back. Why couldn't he come back this time? "He went to college, you know. He is so, so, so _smart_. He could have been a doctor. He could have been a lawyer or something like that. He could have been anything in the world and chose to be a cop."

Cooper smiled sadly. "Yeah," he said, hauling his inebriated partner out the door. "I know."


	11. Chapter 11

** BAY CITY GENERAL HOSPITAL **

**JULY 31, 1979**

The hallway leading to Michael's hospital room was empty but not quiet.

The wheels of his wheelchair were in ill repair. They squeaked and squalled relentlessly as he was pushed through the hall. Clutching the armrests of the chair, he dug his fingertips weakly into the end cushioning, pressing his fingernails into it with as much force as he could. He was trying to solicit pain, something—anything—to contend with his agitation and uneasiness. He hadn't wanted to the leave his room, of that he was certain; though, he couldn't quite recall how he had come to be in his current predicament. He couldn't remember how he had been seized from his bed and placed in the wheelchair, stolen from the familiar safety of his room to the uncertainty of wherever he was being taken.

Though he couldn't remember how he come to be where he currently was, it didn't mean he wasn't improving.

The memory game his mother frequently forced upon him was starting to make a difference. He beginning to be able to silently label a few of the things he would see, associating them with basic designations. He could look at the pajama pants he wore and know that they were called "pants", and he could label them as the color gray. It was information his brain could construct after some concentration; the knowledge that he had done so, however, he couldn't retain for long. He remained stuck, lost in an endless loop of recalling the same information over and over, each time believing it was the first occasion he had done so.

His mind was scattered, confounded and mostly bare, but throughout all his emptiness and confusion, he was able to retain and recall one very important thing—two, if he were counting feelings and if he could suddenly acquire the ability to count, but feelings weren't facts. Where they? If they were then the overwhelming sense of falseness regarding everything surrounding him was certain to make the list of things he could always remember. But more important than that was the other thing. The word; the term of endearment his mother had used when referring to him that he had immediately recognized and, better than that, he had retained.

_Darling. _

His mother had called him darling. He knew this because he remembered it. He knew the word was somehow right, that his mother had called him darling while he was sitting his hospital bed. Even though he couldn't yet recall other instances when she had done so, it was knowledge he clung to, sought respite in, and was comforted anew each and every subsequent time his mother uttered the word.

_Darling_.

He silently repeated the word often in ambiguous moments, seeking the comfort it was certain to bring. Occasions when he was particularly confused, heartsick with no determinate cause, or overcome by the aching pain which always followed his long and grueling physical therapy appointments.

_Darling. _

He silently repeated it now, as he sat weakly in the wheelchair and was pushed through the halls of the hospital by a man he couldn't recognize. He ached for the familiarity of his father or mother and the certainty bestowed by each of their presences. He felt comfortable with them, comforted by their gentle voices and safe. He didn't feel any such things with the man behind him. He felt threatened, accused and judged but why and for what, he wasn't sure.

"What do you think?" the man asked as they stopped in front of an empty waiting room. The furthest wall of the room was lined with windows. Set high above the parking lot, the transparent glass allowed them to look upon the cityscape. "This is as good of a view as any, I guess."

The man pushed Michael toward the windows, then leaving him there, he gathered a neighboring chair and set it in front of wheelchair, so that he and Michael could sit face-to-face and enjoy the periphery view of the sun setting on the city before them.

Sinking into the chair the man frowned, seemingly noticing Michael's inability to look him in the eye.

Staring at the buildings in the distance, watching the beams of the sun bounce off of their dark windows in bright reflection, Michael didn't want to look at the man seated before him. He liked the view; it was a nice change from his hospital room, but something about the company was notably abhorrent.

"You've already forgotten who I am," the man said sadly. "And why we came to this room, haven't you?"

Michael gave no indication he had heard the statement. He had no voice to oppose or support the opinions of others; his only means of communication was to either acknowledge them with his attention or ignore them completely. This person—this strange man, tall, gruff and daunting—he was determined to ignore for as long as he could.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, the man sighed exhaustedly. Then, following Michael's gaze, he looked upon the setting sun and remained quiet for a while.

"My name is Steven," he said, just after the sun was finally set. "Steve to you. I'm your older brother and I've been here all day. I'll be here all day tomorrow too, so that mom and dad can have a break. Well, mom, really. Dad's back at work, so you know how that shit goes." He snorted. "Or I guess, you don't, because if you don't remember me, then you don't remember him, and you certainly don't remember why we picked this room. We came here because you and I used to watch the sun set all the time when were boys. We'd sneak out on the roof just outside window of the bedroom we shared, talk and laugh as we watched the it go down."

Brows furrowing, Michael looked at him, oddly entranced by memories he had no recollection of that he shared with a brother who he didn't remember.

"Mom used to have a fit," Steven continued. "She was always so worried we were too close to the edge and one of us would fall off." He smiled. "You did nothing to help her worry, because each time we went out there, I swear, you made a point of stepping closer and closer to the edge. You were always doing stupid shit like that. You road your bike too fast down steep hills. You jumped into the deep end of the city swimming pool before you even knew how to swim. When the teachers in school in were getting after you, chastising and yelling over something you'd done, you just scream right back. You were so fearless, even back then. Mom and dad and me, we all tried to stop you, to hold you back from whatever it was you were intending to do so that you wouldn't hurt yourself. We tried to protect you back then because I think we all knew that fearless kids make for reckless adults."

Leaning forward, Steven rested his elbows on his knees, covered his face with his palms and sighed again.

Michael wondered if man who was supposed to be his brother was crying. Then he wondered what either of them would do if he was.

"What the hell?" Steven asked. There was no hint of tears in his tone; it was strong, disappointed and furious.

The anger in his brother's tone was notable; it was something Michael immediately noticed and we determined to consider, but then the intention was gone. It disappeared as quickly as it appeared, immediately dissolved by the new words out of Steven's mouth.

"Seriously, Michael, what the _hell_?"

_Michael. _

Silently echoing the name, Michael flinched. This he had heard before—he was certain of that. Both his father and mother used it frequently, reciting as often as they possibly could, probably in an effort to spark his memory into finally remembering it or something else.

_Michael. _

He had heard it so many times before, but this was the first time he recognized it. He knew it. It meant something to him.

_Michael. _

Mouth agape, he stared out the window, trying to understand how something he had heard countless times finally meant so much to him. Was it his name or someone else's? Had to be his. He couldn't imagine feeling this way about a name that belonged to someone else.

"God-damn it, Michael," Steven said. "I told you… The last time you called me, I _fucking_ told you, man, not to mess around with those feds. Be careful, I said. You're gonna end up in jail or dead, but could you listen? No. You never could listen to anybody but yourself because you had everything figured out. You were so fucking fearless and reckless and selfish and _stupid_! You couldn't listen and now look at you; you're brain damaged and a cop is _dead_. He's dead and you're alive, and I don't care if I sound like an asshole, because knowing how you were before all this, I can't help but think that maybe it should have been the other way around—!"

"Excuse me."

Startled by the interjection, Steven looked away from Michael and set his attention on the approaching nurse.

"Visiting hours are over," she said curtly. "I think it's time for you go."

Steven stared at the woman dumbly, his expression slowly transitioning from angry to resigned.

"Okay, sure," he said. "I'll leave, just let me take my brother back to his room."

"I can take him." The nurse grasped the hands of the wheelchair, spinning Michael to face the doorway of the waiting room. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself," she added, mumbling the words under her breath as she began walking, leaving Steven to stand alone in the waiting room.

Michael didn't know who her accusation was intended for—his supposed brother or himself. He knew he didn't care. His primary focus was the name, repeating it over and over like a mantra so he wouldn't forget its meaning again.

_Michael… Michael… Michael…_

It was name he had heard before never knowing what it meant. Never realizing it was something belonged to him.

_Michael… Michael… Michael…_

He had finally recognized his name.


	12. Chapter 12

**BAY CITY PD**

**AUGUST 5, 1979**

The second dancing case of Starsky's career was completed quickly and without a hitch.

The timeliness of the case closure was so impressive that even Chief Ryan made note of it.

Starsky referred all accolades and minor congratulatory statements to Cooper and Lizzy. He simply wasn't deserving of such things, as he had done nothing to contribute to the capture of the criminal beyond sitting at _Fever's_ bar night after night, drinking himself into oblivion.

He didn't know why he had kept showing up after that first night, when he had drunk so much that he couldn't remember how he had gotten home. He didn't know what was pulling him back to the club. Maybe it was the promise of the seemingly endless streams of hard liquor and music so loud that it silenced any conceivable thoughts. Maybe it was because he didn't want to go home and find himself alone—or alone with Alice, because being alone was bad enough but being with Alice had somehow become worse.

He couldn't stop thinking about the day he had met her. The way she had looked at Hutch and put her hand upon his thigh. He hadn't thought of it in such a long time and now that the memory had been recalled there was no ignoring it. Alice had called Hutch handsome and he called her sweet and whole thing was so strange to think about now.

Hutch was a fan of giving people nicknames; there was no denying there was something intimate about the one he had given Alice; she had looked at him ardently; and even now there was something fervid and impassioned in the way Alice was grieving Hutch. It hadn't occurred to Starsky prior to the recalling the memory why Alice loved Hutch so deeply. He hadn't been up to thinking about it. It consumed him now, merging with the hint of suspicion regarding Hutch and Michael Bennett that he couldn't seem to shake.

Given all of this, being in the company of Cooper and Lizzy was a nice change—not that Starsky was literally in either of their company. Cooper and Lizzy were on the dance floor, getting down with their respective—eternally changing—dance partners. Night after night, they worked their way through the crowd until the only people they had left was each other. That last dance was really something to see—or maybe Starsky only thought it was because he was drunk. There was a spark between them, a hint of mutual fondness that could easily become something more. It was a feeling best left alone—Starsky knew—because Lizzy had a daughter and husband waiting for her at home and Cooper had... what?

Starsky didn't know what Cooper had. He had never bothered to ask.

What he did know is that the spark between Cooper and Lizzy, if fostered correctly, could either wreak havoc on their personal lives or turn them into a very effective professional team. It was a shame to waste something like that, the cohesive magic between the two people that only happens once or twice in a lifetime—and that was if a person was lucky. Starsky had been lucky like that; he had experienced that spark first with Colby and then later with Hutch.

Cooper and Lizzy had a spark and if they couldn't be romantically tied then they should at least be friends. In actuality, they should have been partners, she and him, because they made a hell of team.It was a fact Starsky felt important to announce, in the hopes that it might actually come true. How great would that be, if he and Cooper were no longer partners. If Cooper were to surrender his position under Dobey and transfer to vice?

That—Starsky thought—would be terrific.

"You wanna sign this?" Cooper asked, shoving a typed report in front of him.

Leaning back in his chair, Starsky planted his feet on the desk—and on top of the waiting report—and grinned. "Nope."

While was a horribly inconsiderate thing to do and he felt slightly bad, watching Cooper struggle to remain calm, it was necessary nonetheless. It was the first of what Starsky had conceived of many pushes he intended to administer, making Cooper's current partnership with him a little more unbearable as his words served to make a rhetorical partnership between Cooper and Lizzy look more and more appealing.

"You're a child," Cooper seethed.

"Says the kid who's a lot younger than me."

"You can destroy that report if you want, I'm not rewriting it. You wreck it, then you fix it. Which will be a challenge for you seeing as you were so drunk that you don't actually know how anything in the _Fever_ case went down."

"Oh, I saw how it went down. You and Lizzy, man... What a team. You and her get around to doing any behind-the-scenes teamwork?"

"I know what your implying and I don't like it." Sitting on the opposite side of their shared desk, Cooper glared at Starsky. "I don't like it one bit. It's unprofessional and rude."

"We're you unprofessional and rude?" Starsky asked, feigning innocence. It was so hard not to smile as Cooper's cheeks turned slightly pink.

"Of course not."

"Any particular reason for that?"

Starsky hated to ask but it seemed like the appropriate thing to do, following the natural flow of their conversation so that he could eventually guide it toward his own end.

"Do you..." he shrugged nonchalantly. "... have anyone special that would make something like that wrong for you to do?"

"I don't believe it," Cooper said flatly, his cheeks returning to their natural pale hue. "Starsky, are you actually attempting to get to know me?"

"Of course not." Starsky frowned. This was not going as planned. "I don't give a shit about you."

"You seem to care an awful lot about my romantic pursuits for someone who doesn't give a shit." Leaning over the table, Cooper's eyes sparkled evilly as he lowered his voice to nearly an inaudible volume. "Be careful asking questions like that." He tilted his head, grimacing with false regret. "Given your history with your partners, I'm liable to get the wrong idea."

Feet falling to the floor, Starsky was stunned. The statement coupled with the knowing glint in Cooper's eyes were deeply unsettling. They were verification that Cooper already knew more about his past than he ever wanted to share. He didn't want Cooper to know anything. How was it that it suddenly seemed as though he knew everything?

_"__How indeed,"_ Hutch's voice concurred. It was the first time that day he had made himself known. _"What are you going do, kiddo? If he knows the truth about your past romantic pursuits? Can he be trusted not to use that information against you again, in a much more serious setting?"_

_I don't know. _

Starsky immediately thought of Colby and what the truth had cost him. He had worked so hard to become a cop and then, in an instant, his career was gone. And where was he now? Starsky didn't know. He had never been in the habit of checking up on old boyfriends on the sly.

He, himself, could end up like that, by saying the wrong thing to the wrong person. Stripped of his career, forced to figure out what else to make of his life. He had already lost Hutch; he was in no position to lose anything else. He was afraid to lose anything else.

_"__Is Cooper trustworthy?"_ Hutch asked again. _"Or is he a narc?"_

_I don't know. _

"I got to go," Starsky whispered. Rising from his chair, he purposefully didn't look at Cooper as he left the squad room.

Xx

Starsky made it into the Torino before he became completely paralyzed by anger and fear.

_"__You have to stop running from this,"_ Hutch whispered. _"You know that, right? I'm gone and Cooper is here. He's your partner now. It's better to face him, talk to him and feel out what he does or doesn't know and how much of that he is willing to share with someone else." _

"I don't want to talk to him," Starsky said. "I don't want to know him."

_"__You didn't want to know me either."_

"That's different."

_"__How?" _

"Because..."

Starsky began then stopped. He couldn't begin to explain how he felt, or define the sadness that enveloped him a little more each day. He should have been different; he should have been able to take hold of his grief and transform it into something useful. Like anger or frustration, determination and perseverance.

Hutch was dead and Starsky should have been a force to be reckoned with. He should have been a lot of things. But he wasn't, because with his grief had come doubt and jealousy.

Alice and Hutch had a past. Though Hutch hadn't ever owned up to it, the proof had always been there; Starsky had been determined not to see it. Just as he was determined not look too closely at how Hutch had died and the man who had lived. Considering that too closely only promised more pain.

_"__Denial is the brain's way of protecting the heart,"_ Hutch whispered, aptly repeating what he had once said. Back then, the deflective statement was offered in place of a proper explanation about Alice. What was the purpose of repeating it now?

Because Hutch had left a lot over the years. He had always disappeared and reappeared without explanation.

After his disappearances, he was moody and quiet. Sullen and short-tempered for days. There were hints of discontent and conflict lingering just beneath the surface of his volatile demeanor.

In the beginning of their romance, Starsky had told himself that he understood—that Hutch was entitled to space and time, privacy. Just because they were in bed together it didn't mean that had they to be embedded in every moment of each other's life. This justification of his partner's behavior was satisfactory for a while. It had soothed Starsky's worry and dismissed his fears, reminding him that he wasn't some teenage girl pining over an absent boyfriend as Hutch so often teased.

His purposeful dismissal of Hutch's odd behavior and long absences was enough, until one day it wasn't. Until the day Hutch disappeared for three weeks and didn't so much as call. Until the day he finally returned, his hair cut shorter than Starsky had ever seen it before, wearing clothes and stinking of a cologne he didn't recognize.

It was then that his worst fear was finally realized. The day when his buried resentment and heartbreak over Colby's sexual misconduct finally rose up in his chest, leaving Starsky incapable of doing anything other than holding Hutch accountable for the damage Colby had left behind.

Colby had always wandered in their relationship, because that what he did. That was who he was. He didn't know the meaning of monogamy and it wasn't something he wanted learn. Starsky had accepted it because he didn't have any the choice. Things with Hutch were different than that and so was Starsky's concern.

Hutch didn't start out liking men; Starsky was his first, and even though he tried hard to dismiss his worry, he couldn't seem to find a way to calm his fear. When Hutch disappeared, was he wandering? Fulfilling a need that couldn't be denied, was he messing around with women? Or was he experimenting with other men?

Either scenario felt plausible, because before Hutch had liked women—he had liked them a lot—and Starsky was Hutch's first male lover and everyone knew you rarely stuck with your first for good.

With all these worries refusing to be calmed, Starsky had accused Hutch of cheating. Of disappearing for weeks while he tended to whoever he so obviously was seeing secretly on the side. The things he had said felt terrible say but not having Hutch deny his accusations had felt so much worse. It was then that Starsky took the conversation a bit further than he ever wanted or intended to. Seeking some kind of explanation—a reaction or apology—he told Hutch that if he planned on ever leaving again then he better not ever come back.

This would come to be the last time Hutch disappeared before his death.

At the time, Hutch hadn't offered Starsky a reaction, explanation or apology, in return of the threat. He hadn't said anything at all. Appearing burdened with sadness and internal conflict, he had left Starsky's apartment and sought respite in his own.

They didn't talk about the argument. Days and passed and so did the oppression of their mutual moods. Starsky's apprehension regarding Hutch had begun to fade. That was, until he and Hutch had sat in the Torino, shrouded by moonlight on another inevitable stake-out and Hutch had suddenly asked what he did.

_"__What would you do if I got hurt?" _he had whispered.

Starsky shrugged. _"I'd take care of you until you got better."_

_"__No."_ Inhaling deeply, Hutch held his breath and pinched the bridge of his nose.

_"__What do you mean, no?"_

_"__I mean, if I was really hurt." _

_"__What?" _

_"__If I had a life changing injury," _Hutch said quietly, his gaze focused on the empty sidewalk across the street. _"If something really bad happened to me to the point that I was no longer able to be your partner. If it wasn't me sitting here but somebody else. How would you feel? What would you do?"_

Starsky was dumbfounded. He didn't know why the question would be posed any more than he wanted to answer it.

_"__I would feel…bad,"_ he said. He knew his response was inadequate; he didn't know what else to _say. _

_"__Would you still love me?" _

_"__Of course." _

_"__I'm certain you wouldn't,"_ Hutch whispered. _"I don't know that I would want you to. You can't have it both ways, kiddo. You can't ask me to stop leaving and then keep me the way that I am. It just doesn't work that way."_

The statement made no sense. Watching Hutch stare absently out the windshield, not really looking at things rather through them in a dissociative way, Starsky knew they were talking about something important, but he didn't know what. He knew that this moment was important—whether Hutch's words had been purposeful or unconscious, there was something he was trying to say. He was relying on him to ask enough probing questions for the message to be understood.

Stomach churning, heart clenched by nervousness, Starsky had wasted the opportunity. He couldn't think of the right questions; he couldn't even form words to continue the conversation, and the pair completed the remainder of their shift in silence.

Finding himself alone in the Torino, several long months after Hutch's death, it was a terrible memory to recall, a horrible thing to have to live with.

"What were you saying that day?" Starsky asked, posing the question to empty passenger seat.

If he closed his eyes and opened them again, what would he see? Would the seat remain empty, or would he finally wake from this dream?

"What were you really trying to say?"

The question was posed without a response. Hutch's voice couldn't answer because Starsky didn't know.

"Well, I feel like shit," Starsky whispered, feeling a tightness began to build in his throat. "That's the answer to the question you asked me that day. I feel lost, sad and angry, and jealous and confused. I thought you were done leavin' me after I told you where I stood. I thought that you were done with whatever you were doing, but I guess you weren't. You left again and... when you did, you didn't come back, because... because I told you not to."

Shrugging sadly, Starsky fought bitter tears. He had tried to avoid the memory, to bury by drowning it in enough alcohol that it finally sank him for good, but it wouldn't be ignored. It couldn't be ignored, and neither could his guilt.

"Oh, God, Hutch, I didn't mean it...I didn't mean what I said... I want you to come back. Please, please, _please_ just come back...You always came back; no matter how long you were gone for, you _always_ came back."

Lost in his grief, he was becoming desperate, too eager to believe his own foolish words.

"You always came back," he said insistently. He took a deep calming breath, cleared his throat and then swiped at his tears. "You _can_ come back," he whispered firmly. "I know that you can, because you always did. I'm gonna close my eyes, Hutch. I'm keep them closed until I count to ten, then I'm going to open my eyes and you're going to be back. You're going to come back, just like you always did."

He closed his eyes and then paused, taking another deep breath and a moment to steady his voice.

"One... two... three," he began.

He thought he heard footsteps in the distance, reverberating in the dark parking garage and announcing someone's approach.

"Four...five...six..."

The footsteps became closer and closer.

"Seven...eight."

Eyelids clenched tightly, Starsky smiled hopefully as he heard the passenger door of the Torino open. The leather seat creaked as someone sat inside.

"Nine... ten."

Opening his eyes, his stomach flipped with nervous excitement, then felt as though it was plummeting to his knees as he recognized the person next to him.

It couldn't be Hutch and it wasn't. It took everything Starsky had not break down and cry.

"I heard you were upset," Captain Dobey said softly. "Cooper was worried about something he said to you; he followed you out here, saw you crying, then came and found me instead."

"I wasn't crying," Starsky denied.

"Okay," Dobey said, graciously accepting the lie. "What was the counting for?"

"Nothing. Just... wishful thinking, I guess."

"Those wishes have anything to do with Hutch?"

Starsky shrugged.

"I see," Dobey said. "Well, I used to have wishes like that, you know, after Elmo."

"It isn't the same," Starsky quietly dissented.

"I know."

Shocked by the soft agreement, Starsky looked at Dobey questioningly.

"Do really think I'm that dense? I'm not blind, Starsky. I saw the way you looked at Hutch and I saw the way he looked at you. I know there was much more between you than what would have been appropriate to discuss."

"I thought you didn't want to hear about that," Starsky accused, using Dobey's previous words against him. "Because you wouldn't be able to ignore it if you did."

Dobey nodded in the direction of the metro building. "In there I can't ignore what I hear. It doesn't matter what we talk about out here."

"Why?"

"Because I'm sitting in your car. I'm not here as your captain, I'm here as your friend. Starsky, I _really_ think you need a friend."

"I got plenty of friends."

_"__Like who?"_ Hutch's voice challenged. Starsky didn't have an answer.

"Okay, a confidant then," Dobey said. "You need somebody to talk to, especially given what you've been trying to do."

_"__Which is what?"_ Hutch said. _"Starsky, what exactly are you trying to do? You take two steps forward towards finding out what happened to me and then you take ten steps backwards and try to ignore that anything happened at all. I'm gone, kiddo. There's going to come a time when you're not going to be able to ignore that anymore." _

_I'm not ignoring it. _

_"__You're not accepting it," _Hutch countered.

Cringing slightly, Starsky was unable to respond to either Hutch or Dobey. He couldn't explain what he didn't know. He couldn't begin to make someone understand all the things he knew about Hutch or the ones he was slowly realizing he didn't. He couldn't explain the pain and loneliness, the heartache and guilt. He couldn't justify his inaction, his inability and lack of desire to know the truth. He didn't want to know the truth, but Hutch was demanding he consider what happened. If left to his own devices, Starsky was certain he wouldn't have even made it this far.

"I know you've been digging into Hutch's homicide," Dobey said. "I know you've been talking to people, struggling to understand what happened. Agent Walters approached you in this parking garage; he was the one who got you thinking. Or maybe it was his previous conversation with Cooper, the details of which I'm sure were relayed. It took you a while but you eventually talked to Huggy about the warehouse, Hutch and Bennett. Then you talked to Mary in dispatch, she arranged a meeting with Laura in that bar. You talked to her and then you quit asking questions. I'm guessing you didn't like what you found."

"I didn't find anything," Starsky said. He wouldn't deny looking; there was no point in avoiding what Dobey already knew. However, there was value in discovering how the information had been obtained. "Have you been watching me?"

"Not directly."

"Then who has?" Starsky asked the question and then immediately frowned.

_"__Isn't it obvious?"_ Hutch whispered.

"Cooper is your partner, Starsky," Dobey said. "He cares about your wellbeing and so do I. When he came on, I asked him to keep an eye on you, to watch you little closer than he otherwise would have if hadn't wanted him to."

_"__Cooper is a narc,"_ Hutch whispered. _"No matter what, don't ever forget that."_

"Cooper is a fine detective," Dobey said. "And Starsky so are you. He's worried about you and so am I."

"I'm fine."

"Are you sure about that?" Dobey asked sadly. "Because I'm not. You drink too much and you rarely show up for work, and when you do show up, you're either too distracted, hungover, or drunk to be useful. You and Cooper have had six months together and you're more strangers than you are partners. Now, I know six months doesn't seem like such a long time when you're getting to know a new partner. Neither does eight months when it comes to overcoming grief."

_Eight months, Hutch._ Starsky closed his eyes. _God, you've been gone for eight months. _

"I know the time that passed between when we lost Hutch and now doesn't seem like an enough," Dobey continued. "And I know that it isn't. I know that missing Hutch adds to the tension between you and Cooper. You lost your partner in an unimaginable way. He's gone and you're still here. I know you're sad; I know you're lost, but you're far from alone. You have me and you have Cooper. Hutch has been gone for months, Starsky; it's time for you start thinking about what your life going to look like without him."

"There is no life without him," Starsky whispered.

_"__That's not true,"_ Hutch whispered. _"You know that's not true." _

"I know you feel like that now, just like I know someday you'll feel differently," Dobey said. "You'll never stop missing him, that's a given. Someday, the pain will become less overwhelming. You'll be able to look past it and toward something else."

"There is nothing else. I don't want anything else. All I want is him. I want him back. I want him to _come_ back."

"Is that why you keep looking for him?"

Taken aback by the question, Starsky cast Dobey a questioning glace. "I'm not looking for him. He's gone. I…I know that."

"The what are you looking for?" Dobey asked quietly. "Why the need for all the questions? Why the need to talk to Mary in dispatch or Laura at some isolated bar. Why did you need Huggy to tell you anything about who your partner was? Starsky, you loved him. You knew him better than anyone else. What exactly is it that you expect to find?"

"I don't know," Starsky admitted.

"Would it make any difference if you knew what you were looking for? If you knew how and why Hutch died would you feel better or worse than you do right now? I've been on both sides of that. Elmo and I, we weren't the same as you and Hutch. We were partners and we loved each other, but it wasn't the same kind of love you and Hutch shared. That doesn't mean that it hurt any less to lose him or to know I wasn't there when he needed me the most. When Elmo was found strung up like he was, I thought not knowing how or why he had been killed was just about the worst thing I would ever have to endure. Later, when I finally learned Stryker was blame, I realized I was wrong, because the pain I felt after that was so much worse."

_"__How could be worse?"_ Hutch asked. _"How could knowing the truth ever be less desirable than not." _

"You knew," Starsky said quietly. "How could that be bad?"

"I knew Stryker had killed Elmo and I knew why, but there was nothing I could about it. There was no proof at the time, nothing that I could use against him in order to obtain justice for my fallen partner. It took years." Dobey tilted his head. "Shit, I don't have to tell you that. It's because of you and Hutch that Stryker is sitting behind bars now. You'd think I'd feel better, but I don't, because even though I know what happened and why, nothing is going bring Elmo back. It's not going to give us the years together that we lost. It isn't going give me any more memories of my best friend than the ones I already have."

Though Starsky wanted to refute the claim, he couldn't think of the right words to say. He understood what Dobey was saying, the advice he was trying to mask beneath his concern. But he didn't agree. He couldn't agree. When Elmo had died, at least Dobey had a direction to focus his suspicion; he had a probable perp in the form of Stryker. His guilt wasn't the same and neither were his doubts.

Hutch used to leave, but he always came back, that was until the day he didn't. Starsky would always be haunted by the idea that it was his angry words that had prompted Hutch's death.

_"__That's ridiculous,"_ Hutch whispered.

_Is it? I told you not to come back. I told you if you ever left again, we'd be through. _

"So, you talked to Huggy, Mary, and Laura," Dobey reiterated. "What's left for you to do?"

"Do?"

"If you plan on finishing your secret investigation then what's the next step?"

_"__The warehouse,"_ Hutch whispered. _"The warehouse and Michael Bennett are the only two things that remain." _

"I don't know," Starsky lied.

He couldn't tolerate the thought of revisiting the location of Hutch's death. He couldn't walk into the building again and be assaulted with the bloodstains his partner's body had left behind. He couldn't do it. He wouldn't do it. There was no purpose in visiting the scene of the crime.

"The warehouse and Michael Bennett are your final options," Dobey provided thoughtfully. "Though seeing as Bennett is still in the hospital and the FBI has limited access to him, then your only real option is the warehouse."

Starsky shook his head. "No… I don't want to go there."

"I know, believe me, I do. I felt that way about the processing plant where Elmo died. I didn't want to go there ever again. Although, that situation was a little different, because it wasn't abandoned; it was a real hotspot for illegal activities and it was on my beat. I couldn't avoid it indefinitely. I put it off as long as I could. I was afraid to see it again. I used to play this game with myself, I thought that if I didn't face up to what happened to Elmo, if I didn't see where he died or foster a working relationship with my new partner then that meant what I was experiencing wasn't real. I could pretend it was all on big mistake and someday Elmo would come back. I was terrified that laying eyes on that processing plant would dissolve the story I was trying so hard to believe. I was afraid that it would make Elmo's death more real somehow."

Dobey nodded, his eyes glistening with a knowing sadness.

"Pretend a dangerous game when you're grieving, Starsky. You can convince yourself to believe just about anything, and for a long time, I did. That's how I know it's you're what doing now. I had to go back before I could go forward and that's you need to do, too."

Dobey squeezed Starsky's knee as he opened the passenger-side door.

"Come on," he said. "No use in putting it off any longer. I'll drive you to the warehouse. This isn't something I want you doing alone."


	13. Chapter 13

**THE WAREHOUSE **

**AUGUST 5, 1979**

With the exception of a single car, parked near the entrance, the building appeared abandoned.

The vehicle parked in front was a black and modestly sized sedan. It wasn't unlike the car Dobey owned and Starsky currently sat in the passenger seat of. Coming to stop a safe distance away from the other car, Dobey put his car into park and pulled the keys from the ignition.

"Stay here," he ordered as he got out of the vehicle. "Wait until I signal for you to get out."

Starsky didn't have time to reply before Dobey slammed the door shut. He couldn't help feeling nervous as he watched his superior approach the other vehicle. He couldn't get a good look at who was sitting inside of it—he couldn't see if it were one person or two. When the driver unrolled his window and listened to whatever Dobey had walked over to say, the only thing Starsky could really distinguish was the sunglasses on the man's face. The afternoon sun was reflecting off the dark lenses, creating small duel halos, highlighting their presence.

Dobey and the man exchanged a few words, then the man rolled up his window once more. Dobey turned and waived at Starsky, indicating for him to come over.

Heart pounding, Starsky's stomach turned at the prospect. The warehouse didn't look that bad from the outside. It was abandoned, but it appeared more unused than unusable. He wasn't bothered by the outside of the building; he had no memory of seeing it before. Somewhere between the moment he had set eyes upon Hutch's body and now, that particular memory had been forgotten.

But he still remembered Laura's voice and how it prompted him to come to this location; he remembered standing inside the building, seeing Hutch and then screaming as though he might never stop. He remembered running to Hutch's body, dropping to his knees, all-but collapsing, as he rested his head on his partner's unmoving chest. He remembered screaming a series of desperate "no's" and holding on to Hutch's body, and he remembered being grasped by Captain Dobey's strong arms and being pulled away from Hutch, away from the warehouse, away from whatever had happened there.

It was Dobey who had removed Starsky from the scene of Hutch's murder and it he who had brought him back.

"I'm not ready for this," Starsky whispered.

_"__You'll never be ready,"_ Hutch said.

Watching him from afar, Dobey waived again.

_"__Take a deep breath,"_ Hutch instructed softly. _"Then get out of the car. Dobey brought you here for a reason, kiddo. Time to find out what it is."_

Starsky wasn't sure how he summoned the courage to follow Hutch's instructions, but he did. Though his heart still pounded and his body trembled with anticipatory dread, he managed to walked to the front door of the warehouse with little complication. It was opening the door and entering its depths that was the problem.

Hutch had died in this building; it was the last place Starsky had ever seen him. He had entered the building thinking Hutch was still alive and returning to him at some unknown point in the future, and he had left knowing that Hutch was dead and he would never see him again. He would never talk to or hold, argue or laugh with, work or sleep beside him again.

Standing in front of the door now, Starsky was oddly reminded that while Hutch had died in the warehouse, someone else had lived.

Michael Bennett had lived; a man from San Francisco who had no business being in Hutch's company. A man who lying beside him on the bloody concrete, clinging to life by a thread, had no reason to be where he was. It had been such an odd thing to reconcile in the moment and it was even more difficult to try to do now.

Lying beside Bennett, Hutch had been dead, but the last time Starsky had seen Hutch alive, Starsky had been the one Hutch was lying next to.

The evening before Hutch disappeared was one that, at the time, had seemed destined Starsky would spend alone. They had left Metro separately, Starsky anxious for food and a good night's rest and Hutch seemingly just anxious. He had been keyed-up all day, moody and quiet, contemptuous and short-tempered when he did speak. When Starsky went home, Hutch went to gym, intent on physically soothing whatever mental block was impacting his mood. He promised Starsky he would come over after, and, eventually, he did.

Starsky wasn't sure what time Hutch finally turned up or how long he had been sitting in the dark watching him sleep. Hutch had pulled a chair from the kitchen table into the bedroom, placed it next the bed and sat watch over Starsky as he slept.

It had been unsettling for Starsky to suddenly wake and open his eyes and find someone watching him. First because he didn't realize it was Hutch who was doing it, then because of the odd way Hutch was looking at him.

_"__What are you doing?"_ Starsky had quietly asked.

_"__I'm trying to memorize what you look like_," Hutch had said. _"I'm trying to focus on how much I love you, and I'm trying to hold on to this moment so that I don't ever forget it." _

_"__Why are you worried about that?"_ Starsky asked. _"I ain't going nowhere. You'll see me tomorrow and the day after that." _

_"__Yeah,"_ Hutch said weakly.

There was a deep sadness in Hutch's eyes that Starsky was certain he hadn't been privy to before. Whatever Hutch had done at the gym, it had done nothing to soothe the emotions that were brewing inside of him. It was frightening to see him this way; Hutch was always so sure of himself, what would happen and how things would work out.

In the moonlight, he looked hesitant and afraid.

Moving over on the bed, Starsky lay on his side, facing Hutch as he lifted the blanket up in invitation. _"Come here,"_ he said.

Kicking off his shoes, Hutch climbed into bed. Placing his head on Starsky chest, he didn't say anything, but he held on to Starsky tightly as though he would never let go. They lay like that for a while before Hutch's hands began to roam, before Starsky followed his lead, cupping his cheeks and pulling him up to covet his mouth.

Still fully dressed, it seemed like Hutch couldn't get his clothes off fast enough. Their love making was demanding, desperate and wild. Hutch let Starsky take him on the sweat covered sheets, then minutes after it was all over, Hutch began kissing and touching, demanding Starsky do it all over again. And when it was over, when they were both too tried and spent to do anything other than sleep, Hutch placed his head on Starsky's shoulder and trailed his fingertips up and down Starsky's naked chest.

_"__Never let me go,"_ he whispered.

Grasping his partner's hand tightly, Starsky pressed it to his lips. _"I don't intend to,"_ he said lightly.

_"__No."_ Hutch shook his head, his eyes gleaming with desperation—a hint of everything left unsaid. _"That's not good enough. I need you to promise." _

_"__Why?" _

_"__Just promise." _

Starsky smiled, and a deep, satisfied chuckle emerged from the bottom of his chest. "I promise," he vowed softly, then curling himself around Hutch's body, he began giving in to the allure of sated sleep.

Starsky was nearly asleep when Hutch spoke again.

_"__I love you,"_ he whispered.

His voice was so quiet that it felt like a dream, and in that dream, Starsky had an odd feeling, because Hutch sounded wrong. He was terribly sad. Resigned, like he preparing himself for something terrible. Something he didn't want to do.

_"__I've always loved you,"_ Hutch continued. _"I will always love you. I need you know that, because no matter what you're going to come to believe, everything I ever did, I did for you. I did it to protect you." _

When Starsky woke the bed was empty; Hutch was gone. It had taken weeks for his body to be found inside the warehouse Starsky now stood in front of.

When Starsky thought of him now he wanted to think about that night; he wanted to remember how Hutch's body had felt beneath him and looked under the cover of that magical moonlight. He wanted to remember the good, not the bad.

He wanted to remember Hutch as he was when he still here, not what his body had looked like when he had gone. It was something he seemed incapable of doing, because he was haunted by what he had found in this warehouse the day Hutch was discovered. He was tortured by what he had already seen. Pools of blood, grizzly wounds, the smell of the building was awful, and, _oh, God_, somebody had destroyed nearly all of Hutch's handsome face.

Handsome Hutch, that was nickname that Alice gave him, something that, when he was alive, couldn't have been more fitting or true. Except it wasn't true anymore; it had ceased being true the moment Hutch had died. The injury that had taken his life was the same thing that required a closed casket at his wake. You couldn't be handsome when you had been dead for that long before being found or when you had died from an injury like that.

"Are you ready?" Dobey asked, looking between Starsky and the warehouse door.

Feeling the rise of panic, Starsky shook his head.

_"__I know you aren't,"_ Hutch whispered sadly. _"But you're gonna have to be."_

Opening the door to the building, Dobey gently pushed Starsky through it.

The interior of the building was neither what Starsky had anticipated or remembered. The floor had been cleaned, the bloodstains on the cement somehow removed. It didn't look as though anything—good, bad or otherwise—had happen in it for quite a while.

His panic ebbing into a full-bodied numbness, Starsky begin walking the far distance between the front entry and the back of the building, his path lit by the sparse sunlight filtering in through the windows. Dobey followed a few paces behind.

Starsky didn't know how long he walked until he finally stopped, making lap after lap, until finally ceasing in the middle of the building.

"There's nothing here," he said.

"Did you expect there to be something to find?" Dobey asked.

He had expected to somehow see what he had seen before, but anticipating such a thing seemed so silly now. There was no logical reason for him to be forced to view Hutch's body again. There was no reason to dread this place the way he did.

_"__There's no reason for any of it,"_ Hutch's voice concurred.

"It's hard to find much of anything when you don't know what you're looking for," Dobey said. "It's hard to know what the truth about something is when the facts you seek from others don't align with what you see. Huggy and old rumors told you that this warehouse was something it wasn't. They said that dangerous unknown criminals lurked down here, but as you can see that isn't true."

"It isn't true _today_," Starsky said. "And even if it isn't true at all, Huggy was still right about the fed's keeping a close eye on this building." Turning, he looked at Dobey. "Rumor has it that the FBI raided and seized this building months before Hutch died. With the Junior G Man outside, it makes sense why somebody who wasn't on the up-and-up wouldn't want to be operating here now."

"That's an important deduction," Dobey said.

"Why?"

Inhaling deeply, Dobey shook his head and appraised their surroundings. When he seemed to be content with whatever he had found, he looked at Starsky once more.

"I'm going to tell the truth now," he said seriously. "Not the whole truth, mind you, but enough to hopefully put your heart at ease. Then you and I are going to leave this place and we're going to pretend that we never came here; we are going to pretend that this conversation never took place. I'm going to take you home; you're going to take the next two days off and finish up the alcoholic bender you've been on. Then you're going to come back to work; you're going to embrace Cooper as your partner; and you're going to start acting like a cop again. You won't stop missing Hutch. You're still going to hurt and grieve, but you are no longer going to allow that pain dictate your behavior."

Taken aback, Starsky didn't know what to say—not that it mattered, because Dobey continued anyway.

"Mary Tate is a hell of a dispatcher and woman. She's loyal and levelheaded, albeit it misinformed. She told you that poor woman who took the call regarding what happened here was fired because of it."

"Mary didn't tell me that," Starsky disagreed. "Laura did."

"I suppose Laura told you about her mother, her son and ex-husband too. Laura wasn't fired from dispatch for how she handled the call; although her panic didn't do her any favors. She was let go because a difficult situation had arisen, a conflict of interest, I suppose. Her ex is a cop; he works in PD and their marriage didn't exactly end well."

_"__They fired her because her ex is cop?"_ Hutch whispered. _"No. That doesn't feel right."_

"She hadn't been with us for very long before it became apparent that professionalism was not one of her strengths," Dobey said. "She could have stayed had she been able to tolerate working with her ex-husband. It became very apparent very quickly that wasn't going to happen."

"Why didn't Mary just say that then?" Starsky challenged. "Why didn't Laura?"

_"__She said someone threatened her, Starsk,"_ Hutch said. _"She said they would hurt her if she told the truth."_

"Mary is your friend," Dobey said. "People always try to help their friends. Mary is close with Laura; they became very fast friends. Laura was probably embarrassed and angry for the real reason she was fired. She probably didn't want to own up to the truth, so she made it into something it wasn't. She probably told Mary a fantastical story about that call and what happened to her job because of it, and because Mary trusts Laura as friend, she believed her. You have to be careful how much trust you place in people, Starsky. Some good intentions are inherently bad."

Dobey cast a regretful gaze upon the warehouse.

"I thought my intentions the day Hutch was found were good, now I'm not so sure. I was running late to the office that morning. Cal had left his bike in the driveway and I had run right over it." Dobey scoffed, his lips curing into a slight sardonic smile. "God, I was so angry about that. I don't know how many times I have to tell that boy the same thing over and over before he finally listens. He didn't listen that morning and I was late because of it. I heard the all unit call come through on the radio in my car because of it. I heard Laura's voice, just like you did, and it prompted me to respond as well."

Shaking his head regretfully, Dobey paused.

Starsky prayed his superior would both continue and stop taking altogether. He no longer wanted to think about that day; he didn't want to stand in the place in which Hutch was killed and think about how his body was discovered. It was such a foolish desire to want such a thing; he couldn't ignore his memories of that particular day—or Dobey's—if he tried.

"I think I knew right away that Hutch was one of the victims," Dobey said. "I knew he had been absent and I hadn't heard from him the way I normally did when he left. I had a feeling that something bad had happened. I pulled up to the scene and saw your car, felt my stomach drop as I heard your screams, and that was when I knew for sure that the worst had been done."

"I don't remember you coming in," Starsky whispered. "I only remember you pulling me out."

"I saw you and then I took a good look at Hutch and knew immediately that PD was going to lose the investigation. It being Hutch, there was just no conceivable way we were going to be able to keep it. So, my main concern became protecting you. Getting you away from the crime scene and keeping you away from a case you weren't going to allowed to investigate. If I had allowed you to stay, Starsky you never would have left. If you ever had proper opportunity to officially investigate that crime you wouldn't have given it up without a fight, and there needs to be no fighting between you and the FBI, especially now."

_"__How could he know that?"_ Hutch asked. _"How could seeing it was me who had been killed lead him to believe the FBI would lay claim on the investigation?" _

"How could you know that?" Starsky asked Dobey, an odd feeling setting in the pit of his stomach.

"Oh, Starsky," Dobey said, his eyes sparkling with sadness. "You're a good cop, don't tell me you haven't even thought about the most obvious reason why the FBI wanted the investigation. Agent Walters went out of his way to speak with you. I can't believe you wouldn't have thought about why."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

_"__Yes, you do,"_ Hutch whispered. _"Come on, dig deep, kiddo. Think about all the things you've been told. Why would the FBI take my case? Why would Walters come talk to you? He said he missed me; he alluded that he had worked with me before. Why would he do that? You're such a good cop, Starsky. Don't tell me the thought hadn't even crossed your mind." _

But it hadn't, because Starsky had been doing everything he could not to think about the things he had heard.

Dobey ignored Starsky's question. "Your misplaced determination to find out what happened to Hutch stops today," he said firmly. "Do you understand? No more looking into this and bothering people who are never going to tell you anything of value, because it isn't going to bring him back. I brought you here today because it's time for you to stop pretending. Hutch is gone and it's time you let him rest in peace."

"Bennett isn't gone," Starsky countered. He hadn't meant to say anything; he wasn't sure why he had. He had no interest in the man who had managed to survive what Hutch couldn't.

Dobey's expression darkened. "You leave Michael Bennett alone."

"Why?"

"Because he's being closely watched and protected. Starsky, whatever Bennett was doing in this warehouse, it doesn't concern you."

Starsky felt a rush of anger. "Like hell it doesn't! It was my partner who died next to him!"

"Exactly," Dobey said sadly. "Hutch is gone, Starsky, nothing is going to bring him back. Not talking to the people or asking questions that won't ever be answered. Not bothering that poor Bennett kid or his family. Don't you understand? You saw Bennett that day, just like you saw Hutch. Don't you remember what they did to him? How horrible he looked?"

_"__You don't,"_ Hutch said as Starsky shook his head. _"Because you never looked at him, you were too busy screaming over me."_

Dobey took a deep breath. "You're fortunate you don't remember, and maybe Bennett is too."

"What does that mean?"

"It's means that the nature of Bennett's injuries are not dissimilar to the ones that killed Hutch. Bennett may have survived that day but he isn't going to remember it. Most likely he won't remember anything at all. His brain injury was profound; it has left him severely impacted. It will change the rest of his life."

"And nobody cares about that either?" Starsky asked. "Hutch his dead and Bennett is permanently brain damaged and nobody gives a shit?"

"It's not that nobody cares. We all care. But sometimes horrible things happen and it isn't our job to make sure the proper people are held accountable."

"Then whose job is it?" Starsky asked. "We're the police, if it isn't our job then whose is it?"

"I know it doesn't make sense now, but it will and when it does then you'll understand why the FBI took the investigations and why they were so unwilling to share them. The information on these crimes might not be public and the cases have been sealed, but you need to have faith that whatever the FBI did to make what happened to Hutch right, it was enough."

Pulling a folded photograph from the lapel pocket of his suit jacket, Dobey handed it Starsky.

"I have faith that it was enough," Dobey said as he turned and began walking toward the door.

"How can you know that?" Starsky asked as he watched him leave.

Turning briefly, Dobey cast Starsky a knowing look. "Because I've been in law enforcement for nearly thirty years. I've seen enough now to understand one infallible truth."

"Which is what?"

"Everyone always takes care of their own."

Confounded by the statement, Starsky turned his attention to the photograph. It took him a moment to understand what he was seeing, then another to comprehend the significance of the text written upon its bottom, the big, bold block letters that declared who the suited man sitting for a professional photograph truly was.

Hands failing to his sides, Starsky bent over, breath coming in gasps as he felt was left of his world shatter.

It was Hutch who was in the picture. Dressed to the nines, looking as handsome as he ever did; it was the writing on the back of the photograph which finally declared the truth, making Dobey's explanation make more sense than Starsky believed it ever could: **Special Agent Kenneth J Hutchinson, FBI. **


	14. Chapter 14

**VENICE PLACE**

**AUGUST 5, 1979**

Starsky was alone.

Though it was a realization he had only recently made, it was something that, sadly, had been true for a lot longer than that. It had been true for eight months to be exact—if anyone wanted to be specific about it—when Hutch had left, then died and left him alone. Loosing himself in memories, grief and guilt, Starsky had struggled to soothe his pain with booze and Alice's body as he carefully avoided asking questions he didn't want to know the answers to.

Deep down, he had never really wanted to know why Hutch had left or why he had died, because, deep down, he had always known that the truth, whatever it was, was bound to hurt. As Hutch had said, denial really was the brain's way of protecting the heart, and heartsick over his partner's death, Starsky had been determined not to invite anymore pain. He had anticipated eventually finding out Hutch had been cheating; he had _assumed_ Hutch had been cheating, stepping out on their relationship frequently and sometimes for weeks at a time to tend to whatever individual he had hidden on the side. After his untimely death, Starsky had assumed Michael Bennett had been Hutch's guy on the side.

It had been the only logical conclusion, hadn't it?

Sickening and heart wrenching, it was always the truth Starsky hadn't wanted to see. It was his justification for avoiding looking into Hutch's homicide; he had enough suspicions about his partner's wandering ways, he didn't need to have them confirmed. He didn't want to have them confirmed, because he didn't want anything to sully the memory of the man he had lost. He wanted his suspicions to remain suspicions forever, because what was the point of knowing the truth now?

Hutch was gone, unable to respond or explain his actions, confirm or deny any suspicions or even apologize.

Hutch was gone; it was a fact that was devastating enough all on its own. Starsky thought the only thing worse than knowing his partner was dead was confirming his suspicions and knowing rather than speculating that Hutch had been unfaithful while alive.

But he had been wrong.

Oh, God, had he been wrong, because this—knowing the truth about this—hurt so much more than he could have ever imagined, because Hutch hadn't been unfaithful with a person; he had been unfaithful with the truth.

Sitting at the kitchen table, nursing a near empty bottle of Jim Beam, Starsky couldn't take his eyes of the photograph of Hutch Dobey had given him.

_"Please say something,"_ Hutch's voice pleaded. _"Anything."_

Unable to think of anything to say, Starsky took a drink instead. He had a plenty of questions—of that, he was certain—but no answers. What was the point in asking a figment of his imagination questions if he was never going to be able to answer them?

_"Oh, kiddo,"_ Hutch whispered again. _"Talk to me, please. Tell me how you feel. I know you're upset; I know you're devastated I didn't share this with you. Don't keep it inside. Tell me how you feel."_

Was he devastated? Starsky wasn't sure. He felt numb, a certain aftereffect of the whole bottle of Jim Beam he had just finished and an expected outcome of finding out that the one certain truth he had thought he could always count on had been nothing more than a lie.

_"Starsky, please,"_ Hutch tried again.

Starsky set his attention on the empty booze bottle in front of him. It was shame he had drunk it so fast but that didn't matter too much. He had another bottle still stowed in a brown paper bag on the counter, waiting for him to summon the energy to stand up and retrieve it.

_"You don't need to open another bottle,"_ Hutch said. _"Jesus, one is more than enough."_

Starsky stood up defiantly, his vision blurring and legs swaying. Hutch was right, the last thing he needed was another drink. He was drunk—hell, he was way past drunk—but that didn't deter his determination.

_"You're so damned determined when you get pissed off,"_ Hutch said. _"It's a shame that's a quality that doesn't transfer to other areas of your life."_

Grabbing the empty bottle, Starsky deliberately left the picture behind. He purposely ignored Hutch's judgmental statement. What right did Hutch have to judge him now? What did he care what Starsky did? He was dead. How could he have an opinion about anything?

_"I will always care about you,"_ Hutch tried. _"I will always want you to be okay."_

Starsky stood next to the counter and exchanged the empty bottle for the full one. Removing the cap, he tossed on the floor. He wouldn't be needing it; he had every intention of finishing this bottle, just as he intended to ignore anything Hutch's voice had to say.

_"Would it help if I said I was sorry?"_ Hutch asked.

Starsky shook his head. It wouldn't. How could it when he could never know if Hutch had been truly sorry?

_"I told you that I loved you,"_ Hutch reminded, bringing the memory of their last night together to the forefront of Starsky's mind. _"I told you that everything I did was for you."_

Bottle pressed to his lips, Starsky emitted a bitter snort. How the hell was any of this for him?

_"I tried to tell you, Starsk. You know I did. Think about it. All those weird things I said to you. All those times I when was distant or on edge and you didn't know why. I said that it was a bad idea to love me. I said you were only going to get hurt. I said it better for some questions to remained unanswered. I said you couldn't you couldn't have me to yourself the way I was—"_

"You said you loved me!" Starsky screamed, unable to keep quiet any longer. "How could you do this me? A chick or a guy on the side, I could get over, but how could you lie to me about what you were? Who you were!"

_"Maybe I didn't lie."_

Starsky snorted.

_"No, I'm serious,"_ Hutch continued. _"Maybe it was more of an omission than it was a direct lie. Like the apartment, remember?"_

"Well, at least now I know where you got the money buy it!"

_"That's not all you know. Now you know who I really was, all you have to do is have enough courage to ask yourself why."_

"Why what?" Starsky scoffed bitterly.

_"Why I was partnered with you. Why I was posing as Bay City detective when I was actually FBI." _

It was pretty unanswerable, as far questions went. Starsky didn't know and he had no idea what could have facilitated such a thing.

_"What do you really know?"_ Hutch prompted_. "About how I came to be with you?" _

Starsky didn't get the opportunity to consider the question.

"Hey, baby," Alice drawled, wrapping her arms around him from behind.

Skin crawling beneath her touch, Starsky wondered when she had arrived and how much of his one-sided conversation she had heard. Pulling from her embrace, he turned around, peered down at her and wondered something else.

"You smell like a party," Alice said. Reaching for the bottle of Jim Beam on the counter, she smiled. "And I do like a good party."

Grasping her forearm before she apprehended the bottle, Starsky held it tightly.

"What's wrong with you?" Alice protested. "You ain't in the mood to share?"

Expression darkening, Starsky couldn't help wondering if booze were all that he and Alice had shared.

"How did you and Hutch meet?" he demanded.

_"We met in a different life, remember?"_ Hutch's voice whispered seemingly just to haunt and spite him.

Alice looked neither surprised nor eager to answer the question. "Now, why do you have to ask me a question like that?"

"Why won't you answer it?" Starsky asked harshly.

"Because I don't want to." Taking a step away, she struggled to pull her arm from Starsky's grasp. She frowned as he refused to let her go, both his grip and his expression firm. "What's wrong with you, baby?" she asked sadly. "You and I both know that it ain't in your nature to be mean."

"I ain't your baby either," Starsky said.

Alice looked hurt. "You didn't mind me calling you that last night," she countered. Now who was being mean to who? "Or that night before that one, or the one before that."

"I've _always _minded it."

"Like hell you have!"

Releasing Alice's arm, Starsky pushed it toward her chest and turned around. Her refusal to answer the simple question coupled with what he had discovered about Hutch ignited a fury that was so powerful it felt as though it was burning inside his chest. He wasn't sure he could control it. With the alcohol raging through his bloodstream, he didn't know if he wanted to control it.

"You better leave," he said. He forced deep breath and then another and another. The forced inhales and exhales did nothing to calm his anger. "I'm serious, Alice," he added. "If you don't leave—"

"Then what?" Alice scoffed. "What are you going to do, Starsky? Hit me? Throw me around like all other guys do all because of a stupid question I won't answer? Well, go right ahead." Grasping him by the arm, she pulled him around to face her. "You look at me when I'm talking to you!"

Looking at the wall behind her, Starsky refused to reply. What was the point? She wasn't going to answer his question, so he wasn't going to do anything she asked him to.

"Jesus, I thought you were different," she said as she removed her hand. "I'm not stupid; I knew you didn't really love me, but I thought you were different."

Her words had been aimed to wound, and for a fleeting moment, Starsky nearly asked who she was comparing him to. What men—what people—was he was supposedly supposed to be different than? Then he realized he didn't care. It didn't really matter either. He had never been trying to impress her. They didn't have a relationship; they had an arrangement and it was overdue for its end.

"Get out," he said, pointing a finger across the living room and toward the front door.

"Or what?" Alice scoffed. "You gonna make me regret the day I met you?"

Hand falling to his side, Starsky was oddly taken aback, both by the threat Alice had uttered on his behalf and the sorrow in her eyes. He was angry but he wouldn't have hurt her. He wanted her out of the apartment and his bed, but he didn't intend to threaten her in order to keep her that way.

"That's what he said to me, you know," she continued. "And you want to know how we met."

"Who?" Starsky asked.

He was slightly worried now, concerned by Alice's sudden tears. Spilling over her eyelids, they trailed down her pink cheeks as her bottom lip trembled so violently he wasn't sure it would ever stop. Her body was shaking—whether it was due to some drug she was coming off of or their conversation he wasn't sure. She was in pain, and worse, she was afraid. He didn't want to be the reason for her fear. He would never purposely hurt her—well, maybe with words he had intended to, just to get her to leave, but never with his hands or fists—never physically.

Standing in front of him, it dawned on Starsky that was exactly what she was waiting for. She waiting to be hit. She waiting for him to push her around.

"I thought you were different," she said. "I thought you were gonna be different than he was."

"Different than who?" Starsky asked, suddenly unnerved. An old boyfriend? One of her nameless Johns?

"You know," she whispered. "Don't you dare make me say his name. You know because that's why I'm here. That's why I wanted to be here, because I loved him and you loved him too."

_"Did I say that to her?"_ Hutch whispered worriedly. _"No… that can't be right. Why would I do that? Why would I ever threaten her?"_

_It isn't obvious?_ Starsky thought as the bitter truth overwhelmed him.

_"No,"_ Hutch said.

_You knew her in another life, Hutch. She knew who you really were. I think maybe that frightened you enough that you had to scare her into never repeating what she knew. Look at her, Jesus Christ, she's shaking. You're dead and she's still afraid of you._

_"I don't know,"_ Hutch said. _"Maybe the person she's really afraid of is you." _

"I-I can't say it," Alice whispered brokenly. "I-I won't tell you the truth. It's better if I don't… it's better for you and me because… because then you get to remember him the way you knew him and I get to pretend he was really somebody else."

Starsky took a step forward as Alice broke down.

"I loved him so much," she cried. "Oh, God, help me, Starsky. I really did."

"I know," Starsky said as he pulled her into his arms. "Me too."

He didn't say anything else as he held Alice and listened to her cry. Eventually the alcohol got the best of him and when his body began to tiredly sway and his eyelids drooped, he allowed Alice to pull him into bed. They didn't kiss; neither of them moved to undress or caress one another, instead they held on to one another as they drifted a sleep.

Starsky spent the night not alone but with Alice tucked safely in-between his arms.

She was gone the next morning. He awoke to a silent apartment and small note. Placed next to the photograph of Hutch on the table, "Thank you" was all it said, two words from Alice that Starsky was sure meant so much more than they could properly convey. He had asked her leave and so she had. It was time for her to move on; it was time for him to do the same.

It was what Dobey expected of him and he was in no position to ignore his superior's expectations. After all, he was the one who had told Starsky the truth about Hutch and, more than that, Dobey was right. It was time to let go of some of this pain and grief; it was time to pull himself out of this rut and figure out what to do.

He showered and got dressed, made breakfast and forced himself to eat it, then wandered to the greenhouse and watered Hutch's plants. He tried not to think about Alice or Hutch, Bennett or anything that would decompose his even mood. He didn't feel happy and he didn't feel sad, rather some in-between emotion composed of exhaustion and resignation.

Hutch was gone. He wasn't coming back. But Starsky was still here and needed to figure out how to remain that way. There were so many things he didn't know about Hutch—so many things he was certain he never would know—but the small bit information Dobey had shared had brought him a little peace.

Hutch had been FBI; he didn't need to know any more than that. After speaking with Alice, listening to her tears and seeing her fear, he didn't want to know any more than that. What she had alluded to was enough.

_"Do you trust her?"_ Hutch's voice challenged softly. _"Can you? She an addict, kiddo; this probably isn't the first time she concocted a sob story in order to get someone to feel sorry for her. You were going to kick her out, remember? She only said what she said, so that she could spend the night."_

Starsky wasn't so sure Hutch was right—at least not this time—because, after all, Alice had left by her own volition.

_"Come on,"_ Hutch urged, a hint of desperation in his tone. _"You don't really believe her, do you? How can you believe her over me?" _

"I'm not sure I should believe either of you," Starsky said.

_"What?" _

"Alice is a junkie, Hutch, like you said. Even if she's lying about you, that doesn't change the fact that you lied about yourself, too."

_"To protect you."_

"How were you protecting me?" Starsky scoffed. "And what the hell from anyway?"

Hutch didn't answer right away. _"I don't know, but you can find out."_

"No." Starsky shook his head.

_"Why not?" _

"Because you were right. Some questions are better left unasked. Sometimes you just have to let your brain protect your heart."

_"You don't want to know?"_

"I don't think I can handle knowing," Starsky admitted. "At least not right now."

_"When then?" _

If Alice was right about Hutch, if his partner really had turned mean and done something to hurt or intimidate her into silence then he wasn't sure he ever wanted to know. He wanted to remember Hutch the way he knew him, not the way anyone else did. When he thought of Hutch, he wanted to remember his loyalty and his smile, his certainty and strength, how he was formidable and impregnable in public but in private moments so gentle, kindhearted and indulgent. He was the most startling, maddening combination of ferocious and affectionate and if that wasn't who Hutch had really been then Starsky wasn't sure he wanted to know who he truly was.

"I don't know... Hutch, I think maybe Dobey's right, too. It's been eight months; I know I won't ever stop missing or hurting over you, but maybe it's time I start figuring out how things are going to be without you."

_"You don't trust me anymore," _Hutch said sadly.

"I don't know if trust myself anymore. Look at me; look at my life. I drink more often then I don't; I don't show up to work; I've been sharing my—our—bed with a prostitute. You died and I crumbled. I changed and now I have to change again. If I keep going down this road, I'm going to end up dead just like you. Maybe not in the same way, but it'll happen. I can't go on like this. You wouldn't want me to be this way. You wouldn't like it if you were here."

_"I don't like you not trusting me." _

"I don't trust myself," Starsky repeated. "You're not really here, Hutch. Don't you understand that? I'm not really talking to you. All this time I've been talking to you, I've really been talking to myself."

_"I know,"_ Hutch said. _"But don't you understand what that means? You say you don't want to know what happened to me, but my voice was really yours all along. It wasn't me pushing you to talk to people so you could make sense out of my death, it was you. Starsky, you want to know what happened to me; you need to know. Don't pretend otherwise."_

With logic like that, Starsky couldn't disagree. He did want to know and eventually he was sure he would. But the timing was off; he needed get himself together before he unraveled any further. He needed to find himself again before he could focus his attention on finding out who Hutch had been. It was better this way. Following Dobey's instructions, he would take today and tomorrow off, then he would return to work where he would throw himself into whatever investigations he and Cooper where assigned. He would go back to doing what he did best and he would start thinking like a cop. He would stay out of rough bars and Alice's company and cease drawing unnecessary attention to himself; he would hang out at Huggy's again, not to drink but to socialize, to make it appear as though his life was starting to normalize. If he were lucky it would work; he would begin to feel better and eventually he would trust himself enough to find the truth.

_"You're forgetting something,"_ Hutch said. _"If you don't trust me and you don't trust you, then who are you going to trust? You're going to need to trust somebody."_

"I know."

Starsky tilted his head. Dobey could be a good option, after he did tell him the truth. Or maybe Huggy. Huggy was always good with secrets. Though, it wasn't that he wanted someone to keep any secrets—not that he really had any— he just needed someone to keep him honest, out of bars away from booze, focused and clean. Someone who was like Hutch, but not Hutch. Dobey was right when he said he needed a friend, someone who wasn't his superior officer or an occasionally dubious proprietor of a bar. He needed to stay away from bars for a while. His pounding head and sick stomach were glaring proof of that. He needed clear his mind and lay off the booze. He couldn't trust himself to do that if he began frequenting the Pits.

_"Even with the Pits, Huggy is a better option that Dobey,"_ Hutch concurred. _"Are you sure there isn't someone else?"_

"Who?"

_"I don't know. I feel like we're forgetting someone." _

The doorbell rang, a mild chime that seemed to reverberate through the apartment and into the greenhouse where Starsky still stood.

He took his time getting to door, then lingered a moment before opening it to reveal Cooper standing on the other side. Though he didn't look nervous, he appeared tense and slightly timid, which Starsky thought odd for a man who had always seemed so sure of himself.

"Hey," Cooper said.

"Hey," Starsky replied.

"Can I come in?"

Shrugging, Starsky stepped aside and accommodated the request.

Coming to a stop behind the couch, Cooper shoved his hands deep into his jeans pockets and looked around the room. "Dobey told me he a gave you a couple days off," he said. "I just want to come by and see how you were."

"I'm fine."

"That's good. Alice not around today?"

"Alice and me are done."

Cooper appeared relieved. "Good," he said emphatically. "That's the best news I've heard in a while."

"What are you doing here? Did Dobey order you to come check up on me?"

"Of course not."

"Give it up, Cooper. I know the truth. Dobey and I had a talk, he told me he asked you watch me and that's why you're here."

"No," Cooper said, his expression becoming conflicted. "That's not the reason. Maybe it was at first but now it's not."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that, yes, at first I started out watching you because Dobey asked me to, but then I kept doing it because I wanted to and you needed me to."

"I don't need you," Starsky snorted. "For anything."

"Except for when you do," Cooper said. "Listen, Starsky, I don't think you realize how much you need me. Do you have any idea how many times I've shown up to a bar where you were drowning your sorrows and kept you out of a fight and made you sure you got home okay? Do you have any idea?"

"No."

Though Starsky hated to admit it, he didn't; he hadn't the slightest idea how many times Cooper had showed up. He could only remember one night when Cooper had driven home from _Fever_.

"Yeah, I figured," Cooper said sadly. "I've driven you home a lot over these past six months, Starsky. You talk a lot when your drunk; I don't think that you know that but you do. I didn't come here today because Dobey asked me to. In fact, he told me it was time to lay off watching you."

"Then why are you here?"

"Because I'm your partner." Cooper shrugged. "And I'd like to be your friend. I know these last six months have been hard. I know we haven't exactly got along and that's something I know I don't make any easier than you do. You're difficult and so am I, but we're both good cops, Starsky. We could be one hell of team."

"You and Lizzy would be better," Starsky said, returning to the stubborn argument.

"No, we wouldn't," Cooper insisted. "You think that just because she and I are attracted to each other that we would make for a better team than you and I?"

"You're tellin' me you wouldn't? You're better off having someone who loves you or at least likes you covering your back. You're safer that way, both of you are, because you got somebody at your side who's going to do anything they possibly can to make sure you're safe."

"And you won't do that for me?"

"No, man. I don't like you. I won't love you; Lizzy will. I saw the way she was looking at you."

"I'm not asking you to like me," Cooper said. "Starsky, I will never ask you to love me; that's not what I'm interested in. I'm not Hutch, man; he and I, and you and I for that matter, we don't share the same tendencies."

"Tendencies?"

"Come on, you going to make me say it? The man on man thing. The queer thing."

Starsky's fear was renewed. Cooper knew the truth. The only question was what was he going to with it?

"What are you interested in?" Starsky asked. "Why are you still here?"

"I'm here because I owe you an apology and I wanted to make sure you knew that I was trustworthy. I know what Hutch was to you because you told me one night when you were drunk. I'm sorry; it's sensitive, privileged information and I shouldn't have used it against you in such a flippant way. It was mistake for many reasons, but mainly because after you left Metro, I realized that you don't know me well enough to know whether that's a secret that is safe with me. I wanted to tell you that it is."

Pulling his hands from his pockets, Cooper smiled.

"I'm still here because I'm still your partner," he continued. "Partners are supposed to protect each other, even if it's from themselves. The only thing I'm interested in getting you to place where you feel better, where you can be who you were before. I'm not Hutch; I will never be who he was, but God-damn it, Starsky, I'm a good cop and I heard enough stories to know you are _great_ cop. All I need is you to start trying and I swear everything else will fall into place."

Starsky didn't know what to say or how to feel about Cooper's seemingly genuine offer. Cooper wanted to be friends. No, he wanted more than that. He wanted to be partners. Sadly, Starsky realized he didn't have any other choice but to agree.

_"Man,"_ Hutch sighed, _"here we were, trying to figure out who you were going to trust and then this guy shows up with a speech and smile like he knew what we were trying to do. You need someone to trust, kiddo. There's no way around that, but it stinks it's him."_

_I know,_ Starsky thought. _But he's all I got._

"What do you say, Starsky?" Cooper pressed. "Are you ready to show me what you're really made of?"

"Fine," Starsky said softly.


	15. Chapter 15

** BAY CITY GENERAL HOSPITAL**

**AUGUST 18, 1979**

In a dream, Michael stood, his body stiff and unmoving.

He was surrounded by darkness, his feet sunken into a thick dark body of liquid so high that it nearly touched his knees. He wasn't frozen in place, unable to move by something beyond his own control. He was unwilling to move rather, reluctant to proceed any further through the foul-smelling liquid towards the dark infinite horizon.

He was so tired; he couldn't possibly go on without the promise of change. Change in his surroundings, his current predicament, or even himself. Something had to change; something had to stop. He needed to stop it, and he could, if only the man who he was waiting for would finally summon the courage to show up. He had been so certain the man would have come by now. But he hadn't and maybe that meant that he couldn't—maybe it meant that he would never come.

And what was Michael to do if this was the case? How was he supposed to contend with dreams like these and the reality he awoke to? In the dreams, he could think and move and remember most things. Once awake he couldn't do any of those things and that was why he needed the man to come for him.

_"You were always so sure that he would come," _an accusing voice shouted at him from the sky. _"You always assumed he was he much braver than he was. But he's not brave and neither are you." _

_"This is what you wanted," _another voice accused. _"You wanted this, remember?"_

He titled his head in thought. Had he wanted this? It didn't seem possible that he would have ever looked upon his current predicament as a favorable one. He was tortured by dreams such as this and upon waking, he wouldn't remember anything about them. He would be unable to remember anything at all as he lay voiceless and confused, crippled by the injuries someone had brutally inflicted upon his body and mind.

The dark sky began rumbling. A deep, loud cracking that shook the liquid he stood in, rippling and curving the fluid, sending waves, small but powerful, into the substance as far as his eyes could see. The air around him was becoming thick, weighted by moisture as the temperature around him seemed to drop. His skin was cold, but the liquid he stood in was unbearably hot. He wanted to move, to keep walking in effort to eventually find a shore. Somewhere he could climb out of the oppressive waters. Someplace where things could finally feel right.

Nothing felt right. The acrid liquid extended for miles; there wasn't a shore in sight. His feet felt as though they were being burned, his skin boiled away to the bone as he remained unable to summon the energy to move.

What was the point? He never got anywhere. He had come as far as he could on his own. He couldn't go any further alone.

_"It's a shame,"_ a voice boomed. Deep and gritty, its disappointed statement echoed around him. _"Isn't it? Especially for someone like you. You were so full of potential and promise. You were so good at what you did. You could have been anyone; you could have been anything. You could have had the world, instead you chose to have nothing."_

He couldn't dispute the voices; he wouldn't even try. He had been full of potential and promise. He could have had the world, but he had given it up because he had decided that he didn't want it anymore. He had decided he wanted something else instead. He had decided he wanted the man who he was destined to wait for forever.

_"You gave up everything you worked so hard to achieve because you knew it didn't work that way. You couldn't keep the career you had and keep the personal life you wanted,"_ the first voice said. _"You couldn't have it both ways. You couldn't be trusted to do your job correctly once you decided to love the person you had been tasked to watch. You couldn't have it both ways, so you chose which one you wanted more. You decided to leave your career behind in exchange for a life with the person you loved. Even you knew when the decision was made that it was going to come at a cost, because you can't do what you did, then expect to walk away and be let out of your profession recalling everything you once knew." _

"I didn't know," he said, finally finding his voice as he looked up at the dark sky. "I didn't know it would be like this."

_"You knew,"_ the second voice assured. _"Don't pretend now. You asked for this so that you could finally have the thing you wanted most." _

"But I didn't get what I wanted," he protested. "I lost everything I ever had. I gave it all up for him and he's not here; he hasn't come the way I anticipated he would."

_"It's a mistake to love people, remember?"_ the first voice asked. _"It blinds you to their secrets and faults; you can't love people and have your intentions and objectives remain unchanged. Love impacts your priorities; it leaves you weak and vulnerable. You gave up everything because that was what the person who you loved the most asked you to do. But I ask you this, where is he now?" _

"It wasn't supposed to be like this," he said sadly. "I was counting on him to be strong. Walking into this, I really thought he was going to find me. I needed him to find me, so that I could find myself again. He told me he wouldn't let of me; he promised me he wouldn't. I believed him because I believed he was going to be stronger than this. I thought we both would be."

_"You lied to him plenty,"_ the second voice said. _"Maybe he lied to you too." _

He shook his head. It didn't seem possible that such a thing could be true. Not considering what he knew about the man he dearly loved. This endlessly familiar person whom he had studied vigorously once for professional gain then later for much more personal reasons. He had known more about this man prior to the day they had met than he could ever dream of knowing about anyone else, and in the years that had followed, he had come to believe he knew more about this person than he could ever know about himself.

"I know him," he said firmly, refusing to utter a name for fear of how it would make him feel. The darkness extended for miles in front of him; there was no end in sight. No respite on the horizon. He was alone in his choice—it was something that despite all his preparations he hadn't anticipated. He didn't anticipated losing so much of his memory; soon he would awaken from this dream with no memory of this conversation at all. "He's so determined and he damn good at his job. He should have been stronger than this. He should have found me by now."

_"Well,"_ the first voice said, _"you aren't really who he thought you were. Maybe he's not who you thought he was either. You told your lies, maybe he told his own." _

Michael woke with a gasp.

Looking around his surroundings he found his hospital room dark and eerily quiet; he felt a nervousness build in his chest. While he didn't like the light, he couldn't tolerate the dark. He was used to light, bright and jarring—headache inducing, really—rays from the sun assaulting him through the windows or beams of the fluorescent lights, off-putting and agitating, illumining the room in a counterfeit glow. Hated both types of lighting, something he never remembered rather decided anew each time he was besieged by either.

The light was bad, but the darkness was worse.

Cringing with effort, he tried hard to hold on the details of the dream—how he had felt and what been said—but they faded quickly, chased from his immediate memory to be hidden in the depths of his brain where they were certain to never be recalled.

"Hello," someone suddenly said.

Michael was startled by the voice, oddly fearful as he realized he wasn't alone. Casting his gaze upon the room once more, he found it filled with shadows and seemingly empty. For a moment, he wondered if he had heard the voice at all.

"I didn't mean to scare you," the voice added. Stepping forward from the shadows, a man shoved his hands into the pockets of jeans and shrugged. "Or confuse you."

If the man hadn't meant to do the latter, he was doing a terrible job. Michael was very confused. He didn't recognize this man; he couldn't recall if he should. Standing tall, he seemed to tower over the hospital bed, his dark, brown eyes appraising him carefully. He was young but nothing about his appearance was remarkable or familiar. But there was something reminiscent about his voice; it was oddly familiar. Had they met before?

"Do you remember me?" the man asked.

Michael shook his head. _No. _

"Good, because you shouldn't. Not if I did my job right."

_Job? _

"Do you remember what happened to you?"

Again, Michael shook his head. _No._

The man was silent for a moment, his expression set in an impassive mask. "That's for the best, I think."

Michael wasn't sure if the man was right. Given the choice—if he could comprehend of deciding—he would have wanted to know what happened to him. If he knew, then his next wish would have been to remember what he had been told, so that he could somehow make sense of who he had been before and who he was now, what had happened to him before and what was happening to him now.

"Do you want to know?" the man asked. He gave no indication of whether he preferred what choice Michael made. "I suppose sharing generalities can't hurt either of us now. Besides," he smiled in a disingenuous manner, "it isn't like you're going to remember a word I say to you anyway, not with the way I raddled your brain, because, just like you before me, I am damn good at my job. I know what I'm doing when I aim and pull the trigger, just like you did. It won't matter if talk to you; five minutes after I leave, you're not even going to recall I was ever here."

The man was right, the likelihood that Michael would remember him or their conversation was slim. But he had remembered things before this, so maybe he could remember this too. He still remembered his mother calling him darling and he still remembered his name.

_Michael. _

His name was Michael; he knew this because he had heard the name before. It was familiar and more than that, it felt right.

_Darling._

His name was Michael, and his mother has called him darling since the day he was born. He reminded himself of these two facts over and over, in the hope that the firmness of those two memories would somehow bolster him in retaining more.

_Darling...Michael..._

_Darling...Michael..._

_Darling..._

"And even if you do remember, it won't matter anyway. Mutism is the official diagnosis for your continued lack of speech. Given time, that might change. Though probably not in a meaningful way. That's another thing your doctor said about you; you will never recover from what happened to you enough to contribute to society in a meaningful way. This is your reality for now on. Whatever skills you regain they will never rival the ones you lost. Whatever life you are able to build now, will be nothing in comparison to what you once had."

_Michael._

The man shook his head. "It's amazing, the things you were willing to give up all because someone you loved asked you to. It's dangerous to let love people love you, you knew that, but you did it anyway."

_Darling._

"I'll tell you the truth, not that you're going to remember it."

_Michael. _

"I'll tell you, because it none of it really matters anyway. With every day that passes, the truth becomes less and less important to the people who once sought it. It becomes less important to the people who once loved Hutchinson and the people who love you, because after all, he's dead and you're alive. The people who loved him are beginning to figure out how to live without him and the people who love you are struggling to figure out how all of you will move forward with the way you are now. You're not the same as you were before. You won't be, because you can't be. You're different. You will always be different than the person your family remembers you to be. There's no changing that."

_Darling… _

"The truth is there was once a man by the name of Michael Bennett and another by the name of Kenneth Hutchinson."

_Michael—Hutchinson? _

It was new name. Michael didn't know it; he was certain he hadn't heard before.

"One was a Federal Agent and the other was a criminal. They both wanted something that only the other could give, and they were both in way over their heads. Months ago, they both entered the warehouse by their own volition, and they were both consenting participants in what happened to them." The man pointed his index finger at Michael. "_You_ knew what would happen to both of you in there, and _you_ consented to this."

_No._ Michael shook his head. The story felt wrong. Why would he do that? Why would he ask for his voiceless confusion? His sluggish body and mind. Why would he prefer this over whatever it was he had had?

"You did," the man affirmed softly as he appraised the room. "You wanted out of the life you chose. Well, this is what out looks like today. Tomorrow it'll look different. You're being discharged and your parents are taking you home."

He looked upon Michael once more and scoffed bitterly.

"Man, it is amazing what people will believe when they're desperate to hold on the something or someone. Hutchinson's partner is proof of that. He thought he could understand why things happened the way they did. He thought he could interview enough people and then suddenly he'd magically understand why his partner died and you lived, but he won't. He can't. You can't understand something that was purposefully planned to be inexplicable. You can link two guys together who had nothing to do with each other. This was all planned. They did before and they'll do it again, because it's what they do. And just like me, and you before me, they are very, very good at what they do. You're going to go home, Michael, and you're going to begin a new life. It won't be what you had but that doesn't mean it'll be bad. It's important you know that Hutchinson's partner, Starsky, has given up on finding the truth about what happened, not that he really tried all that hard. Grief does terrible things to people. It makes them weak and blind. It certainly made Starsky favor denial over truth. What was it that you used to say?"

_Starsky? _

It was a word that, heartbeat thudding in his ears, Michael was certain he recognized. It meant something to him too though he couldn't begin to understand how or why. Why did this name mean something to him? Why out of all the things the man was saying would this word resonate with him the most?

What was a Starsky? What did it have to do with him?

"Denial is the brain's way of protecting the heart," the man said, seemingly finally recalling the statement. "That was what you used to say. Even so, the life you once had is over; there's no denying that. Starsky has finally accepted that. You should accept it too. You won't remember this conversation after I leave. Like said, it's all for the best."

As the man turned to leave, Michael reached out and grasped his forearm. Both his hand and arm were shaking, his grip was too weak to hold anyone in place. Still, the man didn't try to break the contact; he waited patiently for Michael to make his next move.

Inhaling deeply, Michael's face contorted as he struggled to form words. He needed to know who this Starsky person was. He needed for this man to stand in front of him and continuing talking until he said something else—anything else just as long he didn't stop. The man knew so much and he so little, it was least he could do. It was the very least he could do.

_Michael... darling...Starsky…_

He desperately began silently repeating the words again, desperately hoping he would hang on to this third recognized word and for these recollections to give way to another.

_Michael... darling… Starsky…_

_Michael... darling… Starsky…_

It had to be a person, judging by the way the man was talking about him. Who was this Starsky? Why did he matter so much?

_Michael... darling… Starsky… _

_Michael... darling… Starsky…_

_Michael... darling… Starsky…_

"You wanted to remember, don't you?" the man asked. "You're terrified that if I leave you won't remember any of this. You won't, we both know that. Post-traumatic amnesia is another diagnosis your doctors have given you. You won't remember our talk because you can't; you won't remember life before because those memories are lost to you now. Trust me, when I say, it's better this way. You don't want to remember. You don't want me to fail, because a whole new set of problems are going to arise if you do. You need to understand that while none of this may look like what you thought it would be, you got what you wanted. The FBI, they let you go. They closed the Hutchinson homicide case and now that you're going home, they're going to close the investigation into what they labeled as your attempted homicide. If you want to remember something then try to remember this: you got what you wanted, and, in a way, I did too, because, buddy, I'm the new you."

END PART ONE


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